Movie "The Wizard of Oz": Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.
That, my dear friends, was an honest to goodness (and my personal favorite) listing in the Marin Independent Journal, Marin, California from the summer of 2002.
Given the recent turn events in our world, I have thought all day about two very different but very alike characters: Dorothy and The Wicked Witch of the West.
The differences are obvious:
Dorothy: Small farm girl of around eleven; sweet and innocent; very good.
Witch: Old one-eyed (or green, if you prefer MGM's portrayal of her) hag; mean and rotten; evil.
But there are two very powerful and very important similarities with only a slight difference:
Dorothy: She is on a quest to get the one thing she most desires: Home.
Witch: She is on a quest to get the one thing she most desires: The shoes.
In his groundbreaking novel Wicked: The Live and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Gregory Maguire does a brilliant thing: he gives the Witch a name. A name: Elphaba. I have always felt that was one of the most important things he could have ever done. When we are faced with an unknown evil or an unknown person, is often very easy for us to remove ourselves from certain moral obligations or certain logical ideals that we have been taught because the unknown evil or the person is just that: Unknown. We do not have a name to put with it, so it is much easier for us to fear...or hate...or regard as something or someone we would much rather ignore. Mr. Maguire has taken that reasoning out of the picture altogether and has given us something tangible: a known individual.
(For example, as many of my friends know, I am irrationally and incomprehensibly frightened of the fictional killer, Michael Myers, from John Carpenter's film Halloween. Wait a minute...how can I do that when I just said the UNKNOWN is the thing of which we are frightened?? Easy answer: Michael Myers does not have a discernible face; the facial features of his mask have been erased and replaced with nothing except a blank stare. He is an unknown enemy.)
L. Frank Baum makes it very clear in his story that The Wicked Witch of the West IS the bad guy. She sends wolves to tear the travelers to pieces; a swarm of bees to sting them to death; crows to peck out their eyes and, when she finally captures them with her winged monkeys, she enslaves the lion and Dorothy to put them both to work. So, yes, the Witch is the unanimous villain. Unlike Maguire's story, the Wicked Witch from the original source material by Baum is not a misunderstood outcast living in self-made isolation. She is the evil one. She is the bad guy. She is, dare I say it, the terrorist. ( Terrorism, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion". Yep. She's a terrorist, alright.)
But what about Dorothy?? Isn't Dorothy an enemy, too? Maybe not an enemy to the vast majority of Oz's population...but she is, certainly, an enemy of the Witch. (It would be quite wrong to call Dorothy a terrorist here because Dorothy isn't inflicting fear and terror upon the Witch. It isn't even her idea to be there in the first place. The Wizard sent her to kill the Witch. Hmmm.)
No. Dorothy is a true American heroine. Isn't she? This simple homespun girl swoops down and saves the Munchkins from their terrorist, The Wicked Witch of the East by flattening her with a house (that has pretty impressive aim); and then she marches into the Winkie's territory to rid them of THEIR terrorist:, the Wicked Witch of the West, by melting her with a bucket of water! Not only does she melt the Witch, but she cleans up the mess.
L. Frank Baum makes it very clear in his story that The Wicked Witch of the West IS the bad guy. She sends wolves to tear the travelers to pieces; a swarm of bees to sting them to death; crows to peck out their eyes and, when she finally captures them with her winged monkeys, she enslaves the lion and Dorothy to put them both to work. So, yes, the Witch is the unanimous villain. Unlike Maguire's story, the Wicked Witch from the original source material by Baum is not a misunderstood outcast living in self-made isolation. She is the evil one. She is the bad guy. She is, dare I say it, the terrorist. ( Terrorism, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion". Yep. She's a terrorist, alright.)
But what about Dorothy?? Isn't Dorothy an enemy, too? Maybe not an enemy to the vast majority of Oz's population...but she is, certainly, an enemy of the Witch. (It would be quite wrong to call Dorothy a terrorist here because Dorothy isn't inflicting fear and terror upon the Witch. It isn't even her idea to be there in the first place. The Wizard sent her to kill the Witch. Hmmm.)
No. Dorothy is a true American heroine. Isn't she? This simple homespun girl swoops down and saves the Munchkins from their terrorist, The Wicked Witch of the East by flattening her with a house (that has pretty impressive aim); and then she marches into the Winkie's territory to rid them of THEIR terrorist:, the Wicked Witch of the West, by melting her with a bucket of water! Not only does she melt the Witch, but she cleans up the mess.
"Seeing that she had really melted away to nothing, Dorothy drew another bucket of water and threw it over the mess. She then swept it all out the door. After picking out the sliver shoe, which was all that was left of the old woman, she cleaned and dried it with a cloth, and put it on her foot again." - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
1 comment:
You gotta see this!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDaWL5J6AtY
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