Prestidigitocracy in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939)

The Wizard of Oz is supposed by the land’s inhabitants to be its most powerful magician. But far from having any actual power, he is not even native to the place in which real magic is in plentiful supply. Oddly, this supernatural world seems to be secretly governed by mundane sleight of hand, and growing up, for Dorothy, involves uncovering the flimsy basis of adult authority. Which magic is more potent: the childish imagination, or the symbolic power of grown-ups to educate it? Wes & Erin analyze the 1939 film, “The Wizard of Oz.”  Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Thanks to Nick Ketter for the audio editing on this episode. Transcript 0:09 Wes: The wizard of Oz is supposed by the land's inhabitants to be its most powerful magician. But far from having any actual power, he's not even native to the place in which real magic is in plentiful supply. Oddly, this supernatural world seems to be secretly governed by mundane sleight of hand. And growing up for Dorothy involves uncovering the flimsy basis of adult authority. Which magic is more potent? The childish imagination or the symbolic power of adults to educate it? Today we discuss the 1939 film the wizard of Oz. This is Wes Alwan, and this is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext. And not all episodes of Subtext will appear here. subtextpodcast.com subscribe or by searching for us within the app itself. So, Erin, what do you call a government that is ruled by a stage magician? 1:18 Erin: What? 1:19 Wes: A prestidigitocracy. 1:24 Erin: That's a good one, Wes. 1:26 Wes: So we had been talking about this offline a little bit, so you. I think I've already familiarized you with this idea, but one of the things that struck me about the film and the book is that I find it very interesting that we get transported into this magical world, this fantasy world, but at the center of it, there's this person who is not a real magician, doesn't have real magic. So there's plenty of real magic in that world with witches and so on, and then trees that throw apples at you and all that. But when it comes to this central figure who's supposed to solve all these problems, he is just a kind of a version of a stage magician with no real powers. So it's as if there's this intrusion of the mundane into something that's supposed to be fantastic. I should say that in the book, it uses the word rule. The wizard of Oz rules over the Emerald City. In the script, it's cut out. He lives there, you know, he's said, of course, to be the all powerful. It's unclear, in a way, what his role in the Emerald City actually is. In the book, he's straightforwardly a ruler. I think I had gotten the idea that he was the ruler of Oz, and then I realized, well, wait a minute, you know, it's just the Emerald City. 2:45 Erin: Well, is there Professor Marvel in the book or is everything from that frame narrative kind of. 2:50 Wes: Everything from the frame narrative is cut out. I only read the first part of it and then skimmed the rest. So a listener can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure, yeah, there's no Professor Marvel. 3:00 Erin: Wow. Okay. Yeah, Yeah, I guess that didn't occur to me until you said that while we were watching. Cause we watched it together. It's funny, you know, every time I watch that movie, and it's been a lot of times I watch it as a kid, like, I just, I remember all of my emotions and I'd never tried to analyze it before or even seen any sort of, you know, I just sort of swallow the message at the end and that's it. And never thought about it. So this is a very strange exercise to subtextual a film like this that I have such. I think we both were talking about how we have such primal feelings when it comes to this film and such weird remembrances of it and. Yeah, so that's one of the things that I. You said it. And I kind of noticed that. And lots of other things too, that I don't think that the wizard is the only charlatan in Oz, which is interesting too, but we'll get to that, I'm sure. 3:51 Wes: So. Yeah. What do you mean by that? He's not the only charlatan? 3:54 Erin: Well, I think Dorothy might be the other one. I don't know if that's like too strong of a word, but I mean, she lands in Oz, she's getting celebrated for something that she does accidentally. And in fact, later when the, when the Wicked Witch shows up and says to her, did you kill my sister? Dorothy says, no. She's like, no, no, it was an accident. I didn't mean to kill anybody. And then she kind of like trades on that fame to get into the Emerald City. And then we find out that Oz himself showed up there accidentally and was. Oh, and she's also, of course, the main part of that is that Glinda thinks she's a witch and she's not really a witch. Right. So she has this magical power foisted upon her. And presumably so has Oz. He got there accidentally via balloon. And so we can imagine that his inhabiting Oz and making a sort of a long term career out of. Out of being called a wizard by the, you know, indigenous population is. 4:58 Wes: He's sort of the Kurtz of. 5:01 Erin: Well, yeah. And so he's sort of got a. 5:03 Wes: Heads. There's no heads on spikes. But. 5:05 Erin: Right. Well, I have a great deal of sympathy for him because he has to. He actually has a tremendous amount of wisdom, I think. And he's built it up over time. He's taken his personal brand and built 5:16 Wes: it up over time. And unlike Dorothy, who. 5:22 Erin: Yeah. And Dorothy just wants to leave. Right. That's because she's pure at heart or young at heart or whatever. The thing at the beginning is, you know, she just wants to leave. But maybe the Oz figure is a figure of, like, this is what will happen to you if you're not, you know, real connected with your roots the way you should be by going back to Kansas. This is the bad stuff that'll happen to you, which I don't know that that's bad. And I also don't know. Again, it's. Watching this as a kid, it's like, no one would think of this. But I also just wonder what good or comes of Dorothy's return. Like, it's a dream. She has to wake up eventually. Unless she's gonna be in a coma for the rest of her life. But. Yeah. So I don't know if that's the right choice, per se, if it is a choice. And what awaits her when she goes back to Kansas? 6:07 Wes: What you said earlier on really struck me, which is that when you sort of watch this without thinking about subtext, you just sort of absorb the message at the end, which is a weird message, Right? How does she put it? She says, so this is. She's still in Oz and she's talking to Glinda. I get bothered by plot holes in movies. Just irrationally bothered when, you know, I know I should be suspending disbelief, but the whole idea that she had to go through all this because you've always had the power to go back to Kansas. 6:41 Erin: Right. 6:42 Wes: I'd be really pissed. 6:44 Erin: Are you freaking kidding me? 6:46 Wes: That was a lot to go through. A lot of very traumatic stuff, including thinking you're gonna die. 6:51 Erin: Well, the idea that, like, Glinda, you know, who thinks that Dorothy is a witch and that Kansas is a star, still, like, knows what's best for Dorothy, and that is a perilous, like, physical and emotional journey is really funny. 7:05 Wes: So it's the Scarecrow who says, then why didn't you tell her before? Which, you know, they have to do. I mean, imagine this hadn't been explained. That would have been so frustrating. So Glinda, because she wouldn't have believed me. She had to learn it for herself. Then the Tin man asks her, what have you learned, Dorothy? Dorothy Well, I think that it wasn't enough just to want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie M. It's that if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with. Is that right? And Glinda says that's it because it 7:41 Erin: just wasn't there in the first place. So you can't lose something you didn't have. Like. 7:45 Wes: Yeah. What does this mean if it isn't there? I never really lost it. So what did she think she lost? 7:53 Erin: Her heart's desire. So in other words, she's saying she never really had any ambition. 7:58 Wes: Well, she left because she's trying to protect Toto. 8:01 Erin: Yeah, but Professor Marvel also picks up on another motive. And, you know, he picks up on the fact that she's running away after a couple of tries. And then he says something like, they don't understand you at home. They don't appreciate you. You want to see other. Other lands, big mountains, big oceans, big cities. Something like that. 8:20 Wes: And then Dorothy says, why, it's just like you could read what was inside of me. 8:25 Erin: Right? But I think that the desire to escape with Toto and this desire to break out of Kansas and go see all these places, protecting Toto and leaving maybe are two sides of the same coin. 8:36 Wes: So, yeah, it's not just protecting Toto, but in the very beginning, there's the dissatisfaction with all the adults that aren't paying attention to her and her concerns about Toto. And then this fantasy of going to somewhere over the rainbow. This suggests that her heart's desire has something to do with finding a place where people would listen to her. Or, you know, maybe it has something to do with her parents. Right? She's an orphan. She's with her aunt and uncle. She's with people who are preoccupied with surviving and tending to the farm. And in particular, the three farmhands are going to give her all this hypocritical adult advice. Be smart, be courageous. Things, qualities that they don't themselves have. And then ultimately, I think we're supposed to think that the heart's desire thing is ambiguous between growing up and not growing up. Because Oz is sort of this hybrid world. It's not the over the rainbow paradise. There's lots of terrible things in it. And it's this weird, weirdly childish place, right, where there are munchkins. And it's sort of a. If going away from home is growing up, she's not really left, in a sense, by going to Oz. That's not the. 9:47 Erin: To go back to the beginning, you know, we first see Dorothy and Toto on the road back to the farmhouse, escaping Ms. Gulch. And then we very quickly see Auntie Em and Uncle Henry. And everything seems to me to look like a Dorothea Lange photograph. Like, you know, very dust Bowl y. This is a very broken down place. And Dorothy's pristineness, shall we say, like she's not engaged in the work of the farm the way that some children might be. You know, she's not like some girl who's out there with her pigtails. Yes. But somewhat disheveled and with some overalls, like helping out around the farm. And. And you can even say, I guess, that her attachment to Toto also marks a kind of like a divergence from farm life. Just having a pet solely as a companion. When I was a kid and I still kind of feel this way, I always thought of Auntie Em less so Uncle Henry because he uses. I figured out why he uses terms of endearment with her, and he's a little gentler with her, which I think is typical of an older man with a young girl. But I always thought of Auntie Em as being really mean, and she's really not. In fact, Auntie Em actually in particular seems to really love Dorothy. And there's an urgency to what she's doing in those opening scenes. Like, the farm incubator has broken and so they have to save all these baby chicks, and we're told that, like, some of them are gonna die. So that's a little bit immediately sort of a weird thing. And so Dorothy's coming up and Dorothy has really real concerns. Like she's trying to say that Toto is, you know, gonna get taken away and Ms. Gulch is mad and all this stuff. And. And I guess Auntie Em is like, actually kind of being pretty patient with Dorothy. But, you know, as a kid, you just get this sense of injustice on Dorothy's behalf, that there's an urgency in what Dorothy is trying to tell them. And everyone is dismissing what seems like really real concerns. 11:40 Wes: Why do you think she's being patient? Cause it did seem to me like she was being dismissive. 11:44 Erin: So she doesn't just, like, yell at Dorothy and tell her to go away. Yeah, she, like, tries to give a reason for why she can't listen to Dorothy right now. And she's. She's in the middle of. I don't know if I was in that kind of a situation. And I had some kid coming up to me and bugging me while I was trying to do something urgent. I probably would treat her with a little bit less charity than that, which is really mean to say, but I'd just be like, hey, you know what? Just like, get away from me. I'll talk to you later, you know. Instead, she kind of tries to explain to Dorothy what's going on and says, you know, okay, go away. Like, she does dismiss her, but it's not. But she's not a cruel person at all. And I thought of her as being cruel when I was a kid. Like, everybody's so mean to Dorothy, and Dorothy's trying to tell them that Toto is gonna get hurt and who cares about whatever they're doing, you know, which is a. Very. Obviously, you know, kids have a strong identification with Dorothy and feel those feelings with her, even if that's not kind of what the larger film is showing more objectively. 12:37 Wes: Yeah, I mean, I think the adults all have good reasons in a way, or at least from an adult perspective, because in all likelihood, at that point in the movie, Dorothy's overreacting to something that. A cranky neighbor. Right. Who did something to Toto. It turns out not to be the case. Turns out to be that the threat is very real and something that should be taken seriously. But these are people who are focused on survival. The whole idea of a desolate landscape is very important, in contrast to the attempt to raise animals and to engage in farming and animal husbandry. And there's a lot here about fertility, including the incubator and the chicks, which I think we have to draw connections between that and Dorothy's adolescence. And, you know, there's also even the contrast with Mrs. Gulch. Right, Gulch. Like a dried up creek bed, an old hag. The very personification of infertility associated with being an old maid really is the suggestion. So in this context, where for the aunt and uncle and the farmhands, their lives at stake as well. Right. They're taking care of animals, they're trying to nurture and keep alive. So they're playing this role with respect to the farm that they're not entirely playing with respect to Dorothy. Right. They're sort of. It's a kind of version of parenting that's going on with the farm, nurturing and raising up and all that stuff. And Dorothy is an orphan, lives a life that is oblique to that in a way. And I think that's something I really did not think about, which should be glaringly obvious. Which you pointed out is how out of place she is with that dress. And, I mean, even before she gets the ruby slippers on, right. She's just. She stands out like a. She's very feminine. 14:26 Erin: Yeah. 14:28 Wes: And, you know, like you said, she's not wearing the overall. She's not the farm girl. She's more of a. If she's in high school, then she's in theater club. Right. She's in the drama club. She's very passionate. She's very emotive. She's very idealistic and very caring. And in a way, it's just childhood. It's just understandably childhood. But on the other hand, you get the sense that as an orphan and as someone with substitute parents, she is now, like I said, living a life that's oblique to her circumstances in a really interesting way. 15:06 Erin: So at one point, Auntie Em says, it's no place for Dorothy around a pigsty. Just struck me that, like, when your whole life is pigsty adjacent, what are you supposed to do with that? Where are you supposed to go? And I think that's where we get. You know, it's right after that that we get over the rainbow. But it's clear to me that she's being in the way that she looks. And the fact that she's dismissed from these farm scenes must mean that Auntie Em and Uncle Henry are putting a lot of money and care into her and that they're kind of, you know, preserving her to be a young lady. She's supposed to be 12. 15:38 Wes: I think she's like the Michael of the Godfather. She's. 15:42 Erin: Yeah, exactly. 15:43 Wes: She's being kept out of the family business. 15:47 Erin: But at the same time, you know, I like what you say about the idea of fertility. So she's this prime little baby chick that they've preserved. Right. They've incubated her. And she suffers from no peers except for Toto and an abundance of parents. Right. And I think, at least I feel. And this is, again, one of those primal childhood residual emotions that, you know, Hunk and Hickory and Zeke are all, of course, childlike in their way, which becomes heightened in Oz in the dream sequence. But their sense of authority and superiority over her I felt as a little kid, though I couldn't articulate it, that that's, like, extra galling, you know, like, she has. She has these five authority figures over her, plus Ms. Gulch who are, you know, trying to tell her what to do. And it's like these people keep hitting themselves in the hand with. With hammers and they. They're trying to tell her what to do, and she's just trying to help her dog man. 16:40 Wes: Yeah, it's unwarranted, Right. They don't really possess any authority. And some of this, I think, is about class. It's almost like Dorothy, she's like a little, you know, so there's a family romance fantasy going on here where she's the little adopted aristocrat who's slumming it with all hicks as she's coming of age. Right. With the. The farmhands are all represent a. Sexual possibilities and sexual threats. So there's. There's that kind of danger arising. But it turns out they're all, in a way, they're all very undangerous men. They don't really have any sense of authority about them. They lack the qualities. Right. That they possess. They're quick to give her advice and to do things that, you know, that they can't do. Right. So have a heart, be courageous, stand up to her, or have the brains to avoid Mrs. Gulch. Stuff like that. And then you get that great scene where Zeke saves her from the hogs, but then he's, you know, he's really practically ready to faint because he's so afraid. I think it's really interesting. You know, you get this scene, theories. There's a bunch of steps in the advice she's given. And it begins with the uncle saying that Dorothy needs to. I think Dorothy's left by this point. But that saying to the ant that Dorothy needs someone to play with other than Toto. And then you get the whole thing about brains and heart and courage from the farmhands. And then the aunt shows up to chastise everyone for not working and says, you need to find a place where you'll stay out of trouble. Which Dorothy then interprets as, yes, I need to find a place where there is no trouble. 18:25 Erin: Right, Right. 18:26 Wes: And then you get the over the Rainbow song. But I like this idea of yours, you know, that she has no peers, including no one really to play with, but an abundance of parents. It's just that, you know, it's not that the aunt and uncle are bad parents. I'm sure they're fine parents, but it's just the nature of the relationship between adults and children in which adults will always fail children to some extent. I think that's built into the system and we can discuss why that is. They're all sort of people behind the curtain. Part of growing up is you see the curtain pulled back and you see what adulthood really is, and that they're not adults aren't that all powerful and all knowing and that they're kind of faking it. Right. It's very disturbing. But, you know, she has an abundance of parents who are. At the beginning of the movie. You know, they're people who are not listening to her for one reason or other. Even if some of those reasons are good. 19:21 Erin: I think Auntie Em and Uncle Henry being so much older than she is that the three farmhands kind of fill in the void that would ordinarily be the parents age or a little bit younger. Auntie Em and Uncle Henry are kind of like they would be her grandparents age. I think that's important because I think she doesn't criticize them. They're, you know, as elderly parents, though they're obviously still working the farm and everything. They're gonna have a different relationship to her and a more. Rather, I think, probably a less complicated one than those who are actually in the proper age of a parent to a child. But. And I think we see that in the way that the dream sequence, you know, highlights things in the frame narrative. So we don't get too much indication that Dorothy. You know, Dorothy's kind of humoring the farmhands. You could sense a little bit of her kind of annoyance, but she doesn't say anything out loud like she's listening to them. And she seems to, you know, she kind of has that look like she's taking in everything that they're saying. But then we know that she understands their faults rather well because their dream counterparts contain all of those inadequacies and strengths. I mean, I would argue that even though, like, for instance, Hunk has his advice to use your head undermined by the fact that he keeps hitting his hand, that undermining actually doesn't take away from the fact that what he's given Dorothy is kind of good advice. Like, just try not to go past her house and then there won't be any trouble. And Zeke's immediate springing into action when Dorothy falls into the pigsty. That is a courageous act. And though it's undermined by his sort of shell shock after he's done. Oh, and there's also. What I love about that, too, is that he's separated from the pigs the whole time by the fence, and he's just touching them with a prod. Like, he doesn't actually touch them directly because I'm like, how could he be so scared of pigs and work around the pigs all the time? But he's built a barrier for himself. So he's a little bit like Oz in that way, I guess. But he does courageously jump in without a thought and save her. So their strengths and their weaknesses are registering in Dorothy's mind because they show up in the dream sequence, but Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, they don't have those. I mean, you can argue that Glinda becomes like a surrogate mother to her, but they're kind of, well out of it. And I think it's because Dorothy is trying to figure out how to be an adult. And Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, they're on the other side of that bell 21:49 Wes: curve of adulthood, and they're representatives of the home that she's trying to get back to. So in a sense, they have to be absent. 21:56 Erin: Right. Auntie Em's the only one who shows up as herself in sepia tone in the crystal ball. In the ball, yeah. Yeah, yeah. 22:03 Wes: It's interesting, in the scene with the farmhands, Dorothy, she doesn't accuse them of being brainless. She defends herself. Right. So. So when Hunk says what he says, you know, you'd think he didn't have any brains at all. He says to her, and she says, I have so got brains. And he says, well, why don't you use them then? And then ultimately she says, oh, Hunk, you just won't listen, that's all. So she does accuse people of not listening to her. You know, at some level, obviously, she's aware of their flaws and they get integrated into the dream. And the question, you know, there's this confusion over whether they're her deficits or the deficits of the adults outside of her. And of course, you know, as you. As you point out, they obviously have strengths as well. Hunk is right, and he's hitting himself with the hammer. But that doesn't really suggest that he doesn't have brains. It just suggests that he's clumsy. 22:53 Erin: Exactly. 22:54 Wes: Which again, you see that in the dream world with the scarecrow. The scarecrow turns out to be a good planner and ends up doing lots of brainy things. Right. And including having the idea to drop the chandelier on the guards. But it's something else. It's something else to do with his level of physical coordination, which, you know, it's more suggestive of a kind of childishness or a being at an earlier developmental level. And the point is to develop some sort of agility. So if growing up is what's at issue, it's not about just going from not having brains to having brains or not having a heart to having a heart, stuff like that. It's more about the development of a skill when it comes to using those things. Or maybe it's about coordination. Maybe there's something in this metaphor of being physically clumsy that we. That we could tease out of that. But I do think that, you know, what the farm hands are doing is not very helpful. They are attacking her. They are saying, yeah, you didn't have any brains at all. So they're not all that skilled, as you would expect, at how you deal with a child who is upset, how you deal with her concerns. And in the case of the aunt and uncle, it's. The reasons are different than with the farmhands. With the aunt and uncle, they just have, you know, they're busy with the farm and with their cares and concerns. In the case of the farmhands, they are nominally busy, but they. They have time to give advice. It's more about them being full of themselves is not the right way to put it, but if you were to be a psychologist about. You would say they're defending against their own negative self assessments. Right. Why would you tell someone that they don't have any brains, really? It's what you think about yourself. And your first reaction to someone who needs your reassurance is to be given a feeling. You detect in them that they've done something that's unwise. And you get induced with your own insecurities about whether or not you're capable of doing intelligent things. And then you say to yourself, I am the kind of person who's capable of doing intelligent things. And here's a young person who just needs to be told to do those intelligent things. When, of course, that's not how development and maturation work. 25:10 Erin: And the sense that they're not that far ahead of Dorothy in their own development, like, they have to figure themselves out, too. Like, Dorothy's dream is doing the work of maturing her and the three farmhands by resolving those issues, or whatever you want to call. I don't know if you can resolve defenses. I don't want to use the terminology 25:30 Wes: wrongly, but, yeah, what's to come is this, famously, is this kind of maturational journey that she's on. Right. So it's the whole dream. And by the way, I think as a kid, well, even now, I think it's left ambiguous enough to. Well, I guess it's not really that ambiguous. It is a dream in the book. It's real. And the studios had to make it a dream because they thought the audience wouldn't buy it. Suspend belief and buy into this fantasy world. 25:57 Erin: Well, I think it's so effective because it multiplies the interpretations by putting the dream narrative alongside the frame narrative. I think it's really effective, at least at the beginning. 26:07 Wes: As I mentioned to you before I read this, Salman, the only thing I really read on this is a Salman Rushdie essay called out of Kansas. 26:15 Erin: Yeah, you told me about that. And then I tried to find it, and it was behind the New Yorker paywall, and I let my subscription lapse. But I'll read it after. I think I've read it in the past. Yeah, okay. It rang a bell. 26:27 Wes: So, yeah, I just want to give him credit for the things that I'm borrowing. The one thing that he makes note of. Right. Is that it's hard to turn a movie or plot into a dream sequence and not have the audience object to that, to have that be satisfying. And he mentions Dallas. Right. Where at a certain point, the character played by Patrick Duffy, it turns out, is just everything proceeding is just a dream, and the audience is pissed off. And the show, you know, I think that ultimately that led to the. The end of the show. But there's really none of that in the wizard of Oz. There's no sense that nothing is at stake, even if it's just all a dream. Because what's at stake is psychological. Right. Even if it's all in her head, what's really important about the movie is what's in her head and what's happening to her developmentally. Yeah. So it doesn't decrease the power of it at all. 27:19 Erin: That's really good. Before we move on to something else, I just want to say a couple things I noticed this time about. Particularly about Zeke. I just love. I mean, I love all three farmhands. And unfortunately, Jack Haley gets kind of the short shrift in the opening sequence. But I love Zeke saying to the pigs, get in there before I make a dime bank out of you. Which is. I didn't ever get that. So I never got the fact that he meant, you know, make a piggy bank out of one of the pigs. So taking a pig and making it into a figurine, you know, and then we have all these mixed metaphors around animals. So he says, are you gonna let that old Gulch heifer try and buffalo you? 28:01 Wes: Yeah. 28:01 Erin: And then later he says, next time she squawks, go right up to her and spit in her eye. So all these animals are associated with him. And he's like the pig man. But I like the fact that he suggests making the dimebank out of the pig. And then in a way, it's like he's. You know, we talked about this when we were watching the movie, but, you know, it's like Dorothy, in her head has transposed them into these stuffed animals that she's playing with. And so I think there's something of that seed planted with the dimebank and the fact that Zeke would have to be an animal because he's. Well, first of all, he has that live quality. And I know that a lot of his lines were improvised. That mixed animal metaphor thing continues to happen even in Oz. 28:41 Wes: Oh, doesn't. 28:42 Erin: Yeah, yeah. Lots of different animals. I know he improvised a lot. And actually it was a real problem because Judy Garland kept laughing when he would come up with something surprising. He was really good at coming up with one liners. And she would crack up. And one time, Victor Fleming, even, like, she could not stop laughing. He took her aside and slapped her across the face. And actually, he was very upset that he had done that. And later she. She kissed him to let him know that she was over it. But, you know, anything to make the little girl give a good performance. 29:14 Wes: But. 29:14 Erin: Yeah, but those little nuggets are just so, so good. It just struck me how really cleverly put together this is. 29:21 Wes: I didn't notice that. I mean, I rewatched the first 10 minutes with the script in front of me, and I. When you're just watching it, it all happens so quickly in the beginning that you miss. Or at least I. You know, I've always missed a lot of the details and not even really understood some of the dialogue. When I came to dimebank, I honestly, I didn't figure that out. This morning I saw that. I'm like, what does he mean by dimebank? That must just be some weird bit of slang from back then. But, yes, I did not think of Piggy bank, nor did I notice. Yeah. The mixed metaphors with the animals. That's good. 29:56 Erin: We have over the Rainbow, the greatest American song ever written. 30:00 Wes: Is it. Is that your opinion? 30:01 Erin: No, that's a fact. That's not my opinion. Well, I know it was voted the greatest song by the American Film Institute, but it is the single greatest song in the history of film, I would say. I'd say this movie has the single greatest moment in American film history, has the single greatest song in the history of film, and it has the single greatest performer of the 20th century. 30:23 Wes: All those three things what is the single greatest moment? 30:27 Erin: The transition into color. 30:28 Wes: Oh, right, of course. 30:29 Erin: Don't you think that's like, the most. Single most powerful moment, at least in American film, if not in, like, all film? 30:35 Wes: Well, it's. Yeah. I mean, it's gotta be one of them. It's gotta be. For me, it's hard to assess a lot of. I mean, I know for both of us and for many people, this is a film people grow up watching. Right. So I can't even remember the first time I saw it. And it's just a thing that was on every. Every year around Christmas, and I watch it every year and everything. The movie is so powerful. I mean, it's so. For a child, it's just so captivating. And that moment, which he goes from black and white or sepia to color is so exhilarating. I still remember that from being a kid. And I don't think it was ever not exhilarating. You know, it just became more exhilarating as with each re watching. And then, you know, the same thing with the song, which is interesting that the song, you know, you get this, what turns out to be kind of the centerpiece of the whole film, just right up front early on. Very powerful, very touching. 31:30 Erin: Sometimes I imagine these types of scenarios, like the National Film Registry is going to be razed to the ground and you're tasked with saving one film. This is the one film I would save. I don't know if it's the best film, but it's definitely the film that you would have to save. Right. That seems obvious to me. This is it. 31:48 Wes: I could be on board with that. I'd have to think about. I'd have to run through all the options. 31:55 Erin: But another thing I'll just say is that, like, this is. 31:58 Wes: I mean, there is also Face off with Nicolas Cage. So it's a hard. 32:01 Erin: Oh, damn it. Why do you have to complicate things for me? Like, I think I have all the answers. And then I remember that there is Face Off. If Face off is preserved by the National Film Registry, then who is running that? Probably Nicolas Cage. I just want to say, too, while we're at over the Rainbow, why does no orchestra on earth sound like the MGM orchestra did between the years of, say, 36 and 60? Nothing. Nothing sounds as rich and lush as that MGM studio orchestra. I mean, it is just fantastic. The opening sequence with the clouds and the exhilaration of it. I mean, I get, like, an ecstatic thrill whenever I see those clouds and hear that orchestra at the beginning and and it just. This is just the height of American filmmaking. Which is funny because, like, the two great examples of the height of American filmmaking are, I think, this and Gone with the Wind. Same year, same involvement by Victor Fleming, and both very, very troubled productions with a lot of problems. And yet, like, this is a product of the single greatest studio, with the single greatest assemblage of musical and creative talent in the history of American film. Like, this is the high watermark for me of American culture. You got, like, the greatest singers, greatest dancers, the greatest directors, choreographers, set designers, musical arrangers, vocal coaches, and then this orchestra. It's just. Anyway, this really does it for me. I'm gonna stop now. 33:37 Wes: Well, you're reminding me of one of the pictures in this book called the Making of the wizard of Oz, which I know you've read and I've skimmed. It's a picture of them scoring the film and, you know, with the films on in the background and the orchestra is. Is at work and they all look so delighted with what they're doing. 33:57 Erin: You know, it's just incredible. It's incredible what people were able to do with. 34:01 Wes: Yeah. And the sets, you know, I noticed, you know, on this last viewing and we talked about it a little bit, is just how beautiful the set design is. And I was even looking at part of it, you know, just watching this on a. On a large screen tv, and I don't know if this is a higher resolution that I've. Or the level of detail I'd never really paid attention to. Maybe that's what it is. But the. With the costumes, the makeup, the set design, they're all incredible. And I had this moment where I was thinking about looking at the Cowardly Lion's makeup, which is so great, and just thinking about what would have happened if this were cgi. So we have like an uncanny Valley Cats situation on your hands. Could have been really awful. And so the lack of modern special effects doesn't detract from it at all. And even, as you had mentioned to me, the tornado, they used a stocking for that. Yeah, Everything looks so good and is so compelling. 34:59 Erin: The fact that you have Bert Lahr's costume as a lot of our listeners, you know, this is such a. The lore around this movie is so well known. But you know how it was £90 and he would sweat through it and stink. And there were two people that MGM hired, two guys who were hired to dry that costume out overnight. So it would be not clean, but it would be dry the next day for filming. And, I mean, when you have a studio that you run, like the Beijing Olympics, and you know how to get things done in this sort of, like, fascist dictatorship kind of way anyway. 35:37 Wes: Yeah. One more thing to say. One of the big factors at play here is the incredible talent of some of these people. Of course, Judy Garland herself, and not just the singing, but, I mean, how do you describe what she brings to the role? There's that element of purity. Right. But just the level of passion and emotion. 36:00 Erin: And she's like a perfect human conduit of every deeply felt emotion. 36:06 Wes: It could almost work as a silent film because of the way people are using their bodies and their facial expressions. Everything is right there visually. In the case of the Cowardly lion and the Scarecrow and the Tin man, there's that, I guess, vaudeville element. Is that the right way to put it? 36:26 Erin: Oh, and, yeah, they're all vaudevillians, including Judy. 36:30 Wes: Yeah. So I think that's what I'm trying to get at. What is that? To me, it's just about emotiveness and expressiveness and the fact that, you know, when the Scarecrow, the way he moves is such. It's such a perfect. With him always falling down and having to get back up. And there's a playfulness about everything. There's an energy to it. 36:54 Erin: Yeah. I think that vaudevillians have, or had the perfect combination of sensibilities in what they did. So when you're in front of a large, boisterous audience that has paid very little money to see you in a. In a. In a, you know, touring, say, roadshow in, let's say, Kansas, you have to work to hold their attention. You have to entertain them. You have to feel as though they've. They've gotten their money's worth. And you also have to be very, very real, you know, and. And very, very good at what you do, or you'll get booed. And, you know, you have to be a real pro. You have to have a physical stamina to perform at the vaudevillian level, in terms of the touring schedules that you had and sometimes multiple shows a day. And you can't have poor technique and not be good in order to survive in that kind of environment. And you can't be precious about yourself, and you have to be really, really tough. But I think the most important thing about that is the connection with the audience. And this is something that I really. And we could talk about this in Postscript, but this is something I really believe strongly in, in the arts as performative and you're doing something for an audience, and you're putting yourself on the line for an audience. And I think vaudevillians knew what that was firsthand better than anybody else. And that's the power that you feel, you know, reach through the screen 75 years later, or however many years it's been. That's the power of that, I think. The relationship with the audience and the idea that they know what their job is. And it's not to make themselves look good or to express themselves, though those are byproducts. It's to entertain you and to do anything they can to do that. And that kind of, shall we say, generosity is not something that you see anymore. 38:49 Wes: So vaudeville would involve different types of acts, right, which would include magicians. Am I right about that? 38:55 Erin: Yeah. 38:56 Wes: So there's an interesting connection between the form of the film and the content. With the wizard of Oz, who as the professor, Right. I mean, he's part of a traveling circus. But do we characterize him as a kind of vaudevillian, or am I stretching that? 39:12 Erin: I think he'd be a lower tier vaudevillian, not a very good magician. And some people, you know, they weren't good enough to cut it and got axed from lineups. But he might have been what we would call an early afternoon, given his little chance to shine and maybe eventually getting axed kind of perform. They would have these all day, almost long, long programs. So he would be like the warm up for the warmup maybe. 39:38 Wes: Yeah. And he's a fortune teller, so I might be stretching this too far. I'm not sure where I. Obviously, within Oz itself, he's doing something very much like stage magic assisted by technology to make himself seem more powerful than he actually is. But in the everyday world, right? Do we see him. Do we get the impression that he's more than just a fortune teller fleecing people out of their money by pretending to, you know, like to give Dorothy her fortune? He has a peek at her picture, right? And then he does that whole fortune teller thing where, you know, after she says, that's my Aunt Em, he says her name is Emily. 40:19 Erin: Yeah, yeah. That's such a great. 40:20 Wes: Dorothy's like. Right. How did you know that? 40:22 Erin: I guess, you know, to kind of get back to the plot here I was thinking about kind of like the various threats at work around Dorothy. Like, so we know, like, not four minutes into the film, we have baby chicks dying. There's like the threat of death due to, shall we say, natural events like the tornado, or threats to home and livelihood, which are brought about by, I think, like, a combination of things. First of all, the natural events of maybe like the Dust bowl, and also poverty. You know, like the wagon breaking down, the house, like, very easily coming apart in the wind, the incubator breaking down. So there are all these, like, big threats to Dorothy, I guess, and then there's the sort of the individual threat of Ms. Gulch. But we learn really quickly that she's also one of these larger threats. Like she has money and power, and she shrouds herself in the law to basically advance, like, a personal vendetta against this girl and her dog. So she's very much like the tornado, I think, in that she's bigger than the gales and she can sweep through and destroy what she sees fit. But unlike the tornado, she's sort of, like, actively malevolent. And so I was wondering. I was thinking to myself, you know, is Professor Marvel actually actively benevolent as opposed to Ms. Like, is he the sort of counterpoint to Ms. Gulch? And I kind of think he is. I mean, he also is sort of shrouding himself in these ideas of fortune telling or being able to see into Dorothy's past and future. You know, he's kind of shrouding himself in these larger forces, which are fraudulent, but he is using them very effectively to try to return Dorothy to safety. And she really doesn't get very far, and he immediately reorients her back home. So it's kind of funny because she goes on the whole journey through Oz and all that in order to want to come home, but she's already been intercepted and returned home by the professor, which is something that just occurs to 42:15 Wes: me right now in a much less dramatic way than happens in the dream. 42:19 Erin: Right, right. 42:20 Wes: So now I'm looking at the script, and now I realize where I got the stage magic thing from. And it's actually a wonderful irony, because when the actual sign on his wagon says Professor Marvel, acclaimed by the crowned heads of Europe, let him read your past, present and future in his crystal. And then underneath that, also juggling in sleight of hand. 42:43 Erin: Yeah. Oh, yeah. 42:44 Wes: I love that irony because it sets up this very grandiose idea that he can perform real magic, or, you know, maybe magic isn't the right word, but do something that's truly supernatural, and then it's completely undermined by something as trivial as juggling and then by sleight of hand, which is obviously deceptive. So he's doing two things at once. He's trying to pretend to be, to have these powers convincingly on the one hand, and then he's betraying himself immediately with the sleight of hand. So just to get back to your point, he does come across as very benign, as he will say later on, he's not. What does he say? I'm not a good wizard, but I'm a good person. So there's a lot in the dialogue about whether he's good. You know, Dorothy says the wizard of Oz is. 43:32 Erin: I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard. So I just want to give you that. 43:35 Wes: Okay? So it's really interesting, right? She's just gotten to the supposedly the over the rainbow place and now she's eager to get back. Maybe that's not so surprising given the fact that she landed on a witch. But, you know, she says, I'd give anything to get out of Oz altogether, but which is the way back to Kansas. I can't go the way I came. No, that's true. The only person who might know would be the great and wonderful wizard of Oz, Oz himself. So Glinda, right, who has the power apparently to travel around in a little bubble, doesn't know how to get her home, but. Or she does, right? We find out at the end. But the wizard of Oz, who's just a. You knows, really, what he knows is sleight of hand, is the person to go to to find out how to get home and who can travel in a balloon, you know, but he has no real control over. As opposed to Glinda's little bubble. 44:26 Erin: Yeah. Meanwhile, Glinda has like a 12 bubble garage. She can't lend one to Dorothy anyway. 44:32 Wes: Exactly. 44:32 Erin: She's like the Jay Leno of Oz. 44:34 Wes: Can she spare a bubble? Spare bubble to a poor girl? So Dorothy's first question, is the wizard of Oz, is he good or is he wicked? And Glinda says, oh, he's very good, but very mysterious. He lives in the Emerald City and that's a long journey from here. Did you bring your broomstick with you? So Glinda thinks she's a witch too. So very good, but very mysterious. And then, of course, course, mysterious just turns out to be. Well, he's behind a curtain, essentially, and not, not really what he purports to be. You know, obviously the benevolence of the, of the professor in the real world is borne out by the benevolence of the wizard in this world. Although there is this. There's something much more sinister right? In Oz, because the wizard's means of appearing powerful is to scare people and to have that contraption with the image of the head and to speak very loudly. And in this case, he has to tell them to go away and get the broom. And when they come back, you know, he's still not going to help them. So in Oz, to maintain the appearance of power, he has to be unhelpful. He has to be like the adults who are not listening to her, which speaks to why adults don't listen to children. And so there's an irony to it, because to protect children and make them feel safe, you have to project some sense of power, which, of course, as adults, we don't really possess. It's not like our insecurities have all vanished. It's not like our childhood fears and wishes have all vanished. We're still afflicted with all that. But we represent this much safer world with a sense of kind of a finality to it, to children. And at a certain point in adolescent development, that doesn't become enough because it becomes a kind of a form of fraud. And it also means that there's a rigidity to adults in which they're not as capable of listening. So really, right, the farmhands, in the beginning, they do want to help her, they do want to protect her, but they can't think about that in a way that involves some sort of openness or vulnerability because they're to protect her and to protect themselves, they have to focus on this feeling of being powerful. So that shows up in a much more obvious and sinister way, right, where the professor just. He uses his powers for good, even though he's lying about seeing Auntie Em in the crystal ball. He, you know, he gets Dorothy to go back home, which is the right thing. But in Oz itself, that sort of thing becomes much more sinister. It all works out in the end, of course, but. So there's two forms of evil is too strong a word. But there's two forms of the sinister in Oz, right? There's just the obvious gulch, like malevolence of the witch. And then there's this other, more complicated thing, which is, I think, more representative of adults in general, which is the kind of fraudulent, hypocritical adult world which an adolescent, in growing up has to learn how to navigate. And it's not optional, right? You do have to kind of become more fraudulent as a person as you get older. Right? Kids can say everything that's on their minds. They get away with that. We have to hide Socially, we have to start concealing a lot of things. 47:45 Erin: What you're making me think of is the fact that the journey as being a means of maturation for Dorothy is not just about the typical things. One might assume that, you know, she has to go through perils and make difficult choices and all that kind of thing. It seems like part of that is that casting her in the role of a witch and the parallel to the wizard of Oz is kind of charlatanism as also being really crucial for her maturation so that she can understand what it's like to suddenly be thrust into the role of an adult. And really, it's like the wizard of Oz's own charlatanism is because those around him are like, oh, okay, you've gotten here by balloon. So you're a wizard. 48:27 Wes: Yeah. That's very interesting. 48:29 Erin: Yeah. Like, the idea that you turn 18 and now, okay, you're an adult because society says so. 48:35 Wes: You've landed on the witch, so to speak. 48:38 Erin: Yeah. And that part of being an adult is not maybe willing on our part. I mean, it is to a certain respect. But in another respect, you have a lot of things foisted upon you as an adult that you don't particularly want and a lot of roles that you have to play. And so maybe that understanding on Dorothy's part is that the adults around her are all various forms of charlatans, and that she has to understand that and be sympathetic to that as a way of humoring the fragile masculinity of the farmhands or whatever the case may be. And the funny thing, too, that struck me this time around, I think it's significant that she lands in Munchkin Land, so she's immediately an adult among children, visually. Right. Like, she's cast into this role as an adult, even though she has Glinda there to guide her. The Munchkins are. Some of them are children, some of them are adults. But just the visual contrast, it's as if she's gone into a doll world. 49:34 Wes: Yeah. 49:35 Erin: And she's the adult. And it's also. She's also thrust into the world of bureaucracy. Right. Because this is actually like a Munchkin Land is actually like a highly regulated and organized little place where they have, like, a mayor and they have the official coroner, who I love most. 49:51 Wes: Sincerely. Dead. 49:53 Erin: Yeah. And the land of procedure, where she has to, I don't know, deal with that. 49:59 Wes: Yeah. There's all these wonderful, wonderful contradictions. So you. Yes. They're. They're the Munchkins. It's a world of adults or the size of children. You get all these fusions of the childish and the adult. So including, like the lollipop guild. Right. So a guild is we associate with work and. Oh, yeah, lollipops are what children suck on. It's not just, you know, about pleasure, but it's this very. This kind of oral, infantile pleasure, like a pacifier. I think what that reflects is Dorothy. We know she wants to leave in a way early on. I mean, as you pointed out before, she even has to escape for Toto's sake. She wants to leave. And I think there's a conflict inherent in what it means to leave. Leaving can mean leaving your family and becoming an adult and starting your own life. And leaving can also mean regressing. It can also mean going back to being an infant. And so when she arrives in Oz, you get a kind of hybrid in many different ways of these two things, of a regression to something infantile and adulthood. And the infantile part of this is reflected both in the idealizations involved in Oz. Right. There is a somewhere over the rainbow aspect to it. It's beautiful. It's got wonderful things. What does she say about it in the end? She says that it's beautiful. 51:23 Erin: After she wakes up, she says, like, some of it wasn't very nice, but most of it was beautiful. But just the same, I kept saying, everybody, I want to go home. 51:31 Wes: Yeah. So the infantile aspects of Oz are reflected in both the idealizations and in the evil that appears there. So at the end, Right. She says some of it wasn't very nice, as you just pointed out, but most of it was beautiful. You get all this beauty and wonder, but then you get all this very obvious evil. That's kind of the way the infantile mind works. It splits into these, into black and white. But you also, in the form of the wizard of Oz, you get the intrusion of a more complex. As I was pointing out, there's something sinister in that as well. And that's the more complicated version of evil, which is involved in being an adult. That in going to Oz, there's a fusion there that reflects her conflict between wanting to go back to being an infant and then wanting to become an adult. It sort of reflects that conflict within adolescence. And it's complicated by the fact that to individuate an adolescence, to achieve our independence. So we typically do that by seeking out new identifications. Right. So in adolescence, we start identifying with our peers. We might become involved with a subculture. We pursue certain aspirations Maybe we get wrapped up in the idea of a certain sort of career. So the things that kind of bring us out of the familial fold are influences on us. So if we thought we were becoming free. Right. Because what's happened developmentally during childhood is that it starts with identifications with parents and authority figures. And we might think that that's. To become an adult means to escape that. When in fact, we're put into this quandary where we really just have to develop those identifications further. And so it might seem like we're not actually escaping at all. And the final thing I want to say about that is that there is a kind of magic involved there, which is to say. So I think the prototype for magic is this idea that our thoughts can influence the world. Something like that. In this case, in. In the way human beings influence each other. That's very close to true. Even. Even language. It's. It's. It's very weird when you think about it. And it's predicated on the fact that. Right. We are very prone to identification and imitation. So infants acquire language simply unconsciously through something that I think you could think of as a. As a process of imitation and identification. And then they form themselves as persons in the same way. They develop a conscience, they develop. Acquire certain values. And that is the power, in a way that adults have. I mean, it's two forms of power. It's the form of power that children have that we don't. Right. We can't, you know, as adults, we can't learn languages in the same way. Become fluent, completely fluent in the language just by being exposed to it. And on the other hand, it's kind of the scary power that adults have over us. So what I'm trying to think through is this connection between stage magic, the hypocritical world of adults, and then the real power that they have over us. Something that's implicated in our development into adulthood. 54:45 Erin: The whole idea of the dream sequence, I think, furthers the point that you're making. Like the fact that it's a dream sequence adds so much to the original story. Because of that, like, she's. This is the. The dream is the place where you can. You used some particular phrase that I went out of my head now. But kind of in talking about fashioning one's own reality, the only place in which we can do that perfectly well, I suppose, is just if we lucid dream. But is in the dream world, like, is while we were dreaming. The dream itself is the place where she can have this sway, even if she's not herself powerful in the dream. Or she is, I think, powerful in certain aspects, not in others. The fact that the dream sequence exists as a dream sequence is also a form of consolidation of power on the part of Dorothy, because she gets to go there and express her wishes, even if it's a wish to not be powerful. 55:41 Wes: Well, it is interesting that she is conferred a new power as soon as she arrives. Right. So she kills the witch by accident. It's not because of any power she really has. But then Glinda shows up and immediately puts a target on her head. 55:54 Erin: Yeah, right. 55:56 Wes: By giving her this. These incredibly powerful shoes. Although we don't really know what that power is. And it turns out it's not. Even Glinda says something like, they must be very powerful for her to want them so much. But we never find out what the witch thinks those shoes can do. 56:12 Erin: They give her protection and she can't touch them. 56:15 Wes: Yeah. So for Dorothy, I guess there's, at the very least, there's the power of the shoes involves the ability, the fact that they can't be taken away. But the only power reserve we really find out about in the film, it's not a power that functions within Oz, it's just a power that extracts you from Oz. Right. It takes you back home, it takes you out of the dream. So that power, in a way, crosses the boundary between what's inside of the dream and what's outside of the dream. In a way, it speaks to the power of the dreamer both to create that world and to extract themselves from that world. 56:49 Erin: Not to get into issues of gender too much, but I think it's also. 56:53 Wes: Yes, you know, I hate that. I'm just kidding. 56:56 Erin: No, yeah, no, it's about the power of femininity, maybe. 57:01 Wes: Yeah, absolutely. 57:02 Erin: This is a movie that I think appealed to me on a certain level as a little girl, like a very little girl, just because I was just very hyper feminine little girl. And I liked pretty things and I liked looking at sparkly things, wearing sparkly things, you know. And so the ruby slippers, like, on a very elemental level for me, like, I had a pair, I got a pair of these really gaudy ruby slippers I wore all the time. And that, as a form of protection, I think is really interesting and suggestive. But as I mentioned at the beginning, Dorothy is someone who's feminine and out of place in the farm environment. And this kind of gives, like a cachet to that, you know, in a way, currency that she has in. 57:46 Wes: They're glamorous. Right, right. 57:48 Erin: And also the. 57:49 Wes: It's the power of glamour. Go aheads. 57:51 Erin: Right? Yeah, exactly. No, but Glinda has that too. You know, that's the whole point of Glinda, is that she's beautiful and fabulous or whatever she's supposed to be. Get to be powerful things. When you were the, you know, surviving wife of Florenz Ziegfeld. 58:07 Wes: Let me help you be fabulous, darling. 58:09 Erin: Yeah, exactly, exactly. But a lot of this movie, I think, is an expression of little girls fantasy as a really little girl. And I know a lot of other women who say this, they really loved. And I loved Polly Pocket. 58:23 Wes: I don't know that. 58:24 Erin: Okay, so you get these little things. Sometimes they're just about the size of a little makeup compact or something like that. Just a little round or a little different shapes. About the size of like. You ever see a container of blush or something like that? And about that size, and you open it up, it has all these little figurines in it. And the main little figure is Polly Pocket. And she has all her little friends and she has little tiny clothes and little. So it's like a. It's like a dollhouse, but teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny, shrunk down. And little girls love that. Like, there's this whole contingency of women that I know who say, like, oh, when I was a little girl, I loved little tiny things, you know, and so to me, the munchkins are like the dollhouse or the Polly Pocket. And, you know, the ruby slippers and the sequence with the wash and brush up company in the Emerald City as making yourself pretty and going through makeover and getting your hair done. And, you know, these are all things, I think, that are really strongly associated with things that little girls like. 59:25 Wes: Well, you're making me think about the fact that little girls like them because they also represent this kind of fusion. Right. So shoes are for going out and dancing in and being an adult and looking beautiful in with potential implications for finding a mate. But to make them that sparkly speaks to possibly not always, but possibly speaks to the mindset of a child. They overdo it, maybe, let's say. 59:55 Erin: Yeah. And the dollhouse, too, is having a baby doll. 59:59 Wes: Exactly. So what does this say about the power of the ruby slippers? 1:00:04 Erin: I'm just kind of thinking out loud here. She has to be able to move through Oz with the threat of the Wicked Witch of the west ever before her, but still being able to move freely, they provide her and she has to walk. She can't fly. She doesn't have a broomstick. So they are her vehicle in a way. Right. It's like her little Popemobile because she can't get injured by the Wicked Witch whenever she's wearing them. And as we were talking, too, I was thinking about the trees that don't want to have their apples picked off them. I don't know why that was coming to mind, but now it just occurs to me that the red color, as a really vibrant color, comes up again and again in Oz. And I think that, first of all, it's like, on a purely Technicolor standpoint, it's a really vibrant color. It's also associated with, as we already said, with glamour and maybe with maturation. Maybe that's the inherent connection that I felt was there, that the apple being red, is like a mature apple. So it's a color that's somehow related to maturity and also to vibrancy and to the perfect encapsulation of what is the opposite of Kansas. So one thing that we didn't talk about is just going through the door and into Munchkin land. We immediately see this land of tremendous fertility and fecundity because of the flowers and the overripe beauty of the foliage and everything. And even the Munchkin lands, the houses, even the two brick roads, the one sort of maroony and one yellow. The vibrancy of that is very obviously meant to be a shocking contrast to. To the dust bowl, Sepia Kansas. And I think, like, the ruby slippers are sort of like the crowning symbol of Oz and of whatever the opposite of that. Sepia Kansas is. 1:01:58 Wes: Yeah. I mean, part of it is the vitality. Right. Represented by the color red. The blood element. 1:02:04 Erin: Yeah, vitality. 1:02:07 Wes: And I know, you know, psychoanalytic literature will make a lot of that fact and the fact that she's becoming sexually mature and relating that to the blood color, which, whether or not you think that's a stretch, I think there's a point to that. I mean, you could even see it as a representative of youthfulness and think in terms of the witch or wanting the power that's associated with youthfulness and vitality. And, of course, you can read Gulch, the character of the old hag, as representing the fear on the part of young women that the acquisition of vitality and fertility implies taking that away somehow from women who are aging. Right. It's almost like there's a. It's like an economic theory where there's only so much vitality to go around, and if I take it out of the air, then I'm depriving others of it. It's. It's kind of a. So it's another form of magical thinking where vitality is this zero sum game. And then you begin to fear retaliation on the part of one's elders. And this goes beyond, I think, witches. Right. It even applies to the whole idea of zombies, for instance, I think has something to do with the fact that we live our lives according to ways of life and laws and rules and norms that are. Have been passed down to us for many generations. So the dead make their presence felt. And there's, I think, maybe some irrational, unconscious fear that if we deviate from their ways, they might retaliate because those ways are the only ways in which they can still be alive. They have to be alive in us through those ways that they've affected us. Maybe the idea is that just the existence of the dead is predicated on the existence of the living. So again, we fear some sort of envy which would bring them out of their graves. To take that back, something like that. So I think it applies more broadly. So, yeah, you can read this as the worry of someone who's maturing that her maturity comes with a cost to adults. And it's the sort of cost that will lead them to retaliate, even if we just think of it as envy. And so this is true, of course. Right. The way that adults relate to the young are older people, let's just put it that way. Older people relate to the young. Is there is some element of envy in that. And it comes out even when they're trying to help them, as we see with the farmhands, even this idea that when they're trying to tell her to be smarter or do this or that. You could read all of that as involving a certain amount of hostility that comes from the fact that this person has their life ahead of them. So you want to help them, shape their life. You want to use your adult powers to affect them and live vicarious through them. Maybe that's the way to put it, you know, this desire to live vicariously through which there's a positive element to that and being helpful. But there's also this kind of, I want your life. I want to take it from you. I want it to be mine. I think maybe that's the. You could read that as the power vitality is the power the shoes represent. And that would explain why the witch wants them. I think in the book, it seems to me that it's not explained at all. We know that the witch thinks they're powerful. We don't know why. And then, of course, the filmmakers have made their own little addition to this. I don't think the shoes help Dorothy get home in the book, but in the movie they serve that purpose, which actually really ends up being interesting because, like I said, the power, it's not an intra Oz form of power at that point. It's a power that transcends the dream frame. 1:05:53 Erin: It just strikes me how personally perfect this film was in ways that I didn't even know until this moment in terms of my obsession with it in childhood. Yeah, yeah. So she interprets her journey as having gone looking for her heart's desire, which is funny because, you know, nominally, the reason, as we already talked about, is because of the very real threat to Toto and that necessity for leaving so that she can save Toto's life. So I suppose the question becomes, like, what is her heart's desire and where do we end with that? So the desire to see big cities and oceans and mountains, as Professor Marvel says to her at the beginning, Dorothy identifies with that and says, yes, you know, that's the reason why she's running away, is to have these experiences and to go to the place beyond the rainbow and to go to a place where people listen to her, perhaps. All of which are very reasonable. I mean, the over the rainbow fantasy I think we can just interpret as being like, she wants to get out. She wants to see more than just the parameters of this farm in which she really has no place. So that seems to me to be a very reasonable expectation. Maybe she has to go away to college or, you know, whatever the case may be, because there is no role for her at home. And so I suppose what's troubling about the end is for me, just understanding this on this level for the first time really is okay. So she comes back and she, like the dog, is still possibly going to be seized by the sheriff and destroyed, and she's still in an environment in which she has no place. And that is going to become more and more of a problem the more she grows up. And when she goes through puberty, that's going to be an even bigger problem. Unless she could find some group of fellow theater kids or whatever or somebody to come and date her. I don't know. What do you think about all this? 1:07:52 Wes: Yeah, maybe the word backyard extends to, like, the nearest small town. 1:07:57 Erin: Hope so. 1:07:58 Wes: Square dancing and the. Well, I think I'm just thinking on my feet about this too, but I think I've kind of talked about this a little bit already. But I think heart's desire is always ambiguous between adult desire and the desire to be a child. In some sense, our heart's desire is to for a utopia, for somewhere beyond the rainbow which reflects our initial conditions either as human beings in the golden age or in Eden, or as infants in the womb or in some perfect childhood situation. And our heart's desire is always to return to that. And that heart's desire gets grafted onto adult heart's desires and it complicates them immensely. So that if I'm looking for a mate or I'm looking for a career, those things can get complicated just to the extent that they are infused with this other element, which is essentially grandiose. It's a desire to return to the powers of childhood in which the world does seem to be controlled in a way by our thoughts because we are just subject to the mind reading ministrations of adults. You want to be fed milk and suddenly you have milk. So that, for instance, if you want to be a great scientist like Mr. Frankenstein and that ambition is to infused with this more regressive and grandiose element, then it becomes very difficult to function in that way. And this is a real problem, right? So when you see the reason why people get stuck is because their adult heart's desires are just too complicated by and caught up in this other grandiose element. The other thing I thought about here is about Toto, which there's so many things obviously we didn't get a chance to talk about because the film is just too big. But we didn't really talk about what Toto might represent. And Toto, in a way seems to me to represent curiosity or desire itself. Right? Toto is always nosing about. Toto is the one who draws the curtain, revealing the wizard and exploding his pretenses. So that it makes sense in a way to say that her motivation is too protect Toto. Because it does seem to mean that she's protecting or maybe developing or nurturing something about herself. And that could be this more adult version of desire and curiosity and aspiration, something playful, right? Going back to this idea that she only has Toto to play with and something that's not overly grandiose and overly serious, so much so that it could become crippling. So what about staying home or staying in one's own backyard? Obviously, right on the face of it, that's not a real solution. This is one of the things Rushdie hates about this, it doesn't make sense to him. This whole idea, this little moral at the end, is precisely the opposite. And Rushdie reads this almost in terms of the desire of immigrants to leave and to start anew, to start fresh. And so it's disappointing. This idea of return actually, is ultimately disappointing. But one way to read this is that not going any further than one's own backyard is just to reject the regressive or grandiose element of the impulse of desire. So it's to stay down to earth, so to speak. 1:11:41 Erin: I like that. I think, on the one hand, if I take it literally, it's a little sad, because staying in your own backyard for Dorothy means resigning herself to the fate of Auntie Em. I think I've successfully said Auntie Em through this whole thing. I was resolved to say Auntie Em and not Auntie M, even though I firmly believe in Auntie as the pronunciation. I wanted to do it as the movie's pronunciation. But anyway, so I think I've done that successfully, but I don't know. Anyway, so it's becoming a. You know, what Professor Marvel will describe as a careworn person. And I imagine that I'm assuming Auntie M is elderly, but, you know, there's. She could be 30 years old, 1:12:21 Wes: and 1:12:21 Erin: that's gonna be, you know, I mean, like, migrant mother was, you know, 32, I think, in the Dorothea Lange photograph, maybe 34. But anyway, so there's a danger in that for me, because part of why Dorothy doesn't fit in this way is because she's a dreamer. She's bigger than this world. And so it seems to me to be a waste to have someone like that stay in her own backyard. However, as you were talking and I was reflecting on what you were saying, I was thinking a big theme with the three farmhands and their dream counterparts and also with Dorothy, is that you already have the answer within yourself and that Dorothy, on some level, recognizes, as I said at the beginning, the strengths of the farmhands, as well as their weaknesses. Their weaknesses are kind of highlighted in the dream sequence, but they've also already had the answers. And the wizard only has to provide them with the outward recognition of those inner strengths. Yeah. To make them feel worthy or to make them feel as though they can call them. Like with me not wanting to call myself a poet, if he had given me a certificate of poetry or something, then I could feel comfortable calling myself that. So it's a strange thing. It's as though this journey of maturation, it's actually a journey of recognizing the maturation that has already occurred. 1:13:43 Wes: Yeah. 1:13:44 Erin: Or the seeds within oneself that have already presented signs of sprouting. I think more maturation for Dorothy, but also recognizing the strengths already inherent in those around her. So insofar as the home or the backyard is one's own psyche, not to make it too grandiose. That is really interesting. 1:14:06 Wes: Yeah. No, I think you're exactly right. And I'm glad we didn't miss this, because obviously that's a recapitulation of what's just happened with the wizard. Right. The idea is that they're all seeking outside of themselves. Right. Someone is going to hand me a heart. Someone is going to hand me brains. I'm just recapitulating what you just said. And really, it's not something that's bequeathed to me from the outside. It's. But it's an internal developmental process, and it's a misreading of maturation. To think that to become an adult is just to simply have adulthood kind of handed to you by adults. Right. By these powerful people. They just give you the power. And now, hey, you're good. It's true, of course, that maturing involves the influence of adults, but it's a much more complicated process. And it does involve something that's more like what the wizard does at the end, which is symbolic. Right. And that's where the magic is really. It's more natural. It's not truly magical in the sense of handing over these powers, but it is about being recognized by one's peers as such, or maybe recognizing oneself as such so that there's a kind of. Kind of reflexively constituted. So that you. You know, I think the professor says that the lion is. Suffers from disordered thinking. Something like that. And so you get the sense that, well, if you thought of yourself as courageous, you would be. Or if you recognize the courageous qualities that are already there in yourself, you would be. Or if you just stop beating yourself up so much. Right. Stop holding yourself back, then those natural propensities which are there in all of us would just have a chance to emerge. 1:15:50 Erin: And that's magical thinking, too. But that's magical thinking made good. 1:15:54 Wes: Yeah, exactly. 1:15:55 Erin: You just have to think that. And then the world will reflect it. 1:15:57 Wes: Yes, Very good. 1:16:00 Erin: Well, cool. All right, let's end there. 1:16:02 Wes: Thank you. 1:16:03 Erin: Thank you. 1:16:05 Wes: And thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. And if you like us, a rating or review would help a lot. 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