David Parker is an idiot. It’s common knowledge that Baum was a follower of Theosophy, a pseudo-philosophy that was very popular at the end of the 19th century. All the symbols in the Oz books - he wrote 14 - were straight out of Blavatsky’s writings.
I don’t know about others interpretations but what I got from the movie as a kid was:
Everything I could ever want I could find in my own backyard if I look for it; There is no place like home; Finally be it love, intelligence, or bravery when things are at their worst I would find these qualities within myself.
The books were great too.
OMG - The Wizard of Oz!!?? The story about the development of the Wizard of Oz is pretty simple; Frank L. Baum loved telling stories to his kids and the Wizard of Oz was developed over a period of years as he found new items to integrate into the story.
From my (relatively) early childhood, I have always loved the Oz stories and never found any evil underpinnings of marxism or satanism or any other such nonsense. Nor do I believe that was ever Mr. Baum’s intent.
If idiots need something to read ridiculous interpretations into, I’m sure that they can find plenty if they only look. Anything emanating from Hollyweird is a good place to start.
Leave the Wizard of Oz alone.
I am always interested in what the author thinks his or her book is about. A few months ago I listened to a university lecture on Flannery O’Connor in itunes. If I remember correctly, the lecturer said that, although O’Connor herself said that much of her work had a religious theme, what she was really writing about was racism and sexism and not religion at all. I disagree. Her settings reflected the culture of their times, not necessarily making a value judgment. But the university professors know better. It’s all Marxist-Feminism, all the time. One of the biggest and most destructive college lies is contemporary literary criticism.
ping
Postmodernists believe that texts can have multiple meanings (polysemy) and should be deconstructed to find them out. The subjectivity of the reader determines what the author actually intended.
The "author" quotes Sandusky?
Just an interesting tidbit, when Baum first told the stories to kids in ND he ran a general store. He came up with the name “OZ” because he had a file cabinet with two drawers — A-N and O-Z.
Actually, Baum was presciently fore-telling the 1980 election results. Reagan put together the votes of the Southern states, the Mid-west, and the industrial workers of the Great Lakes Region.
Lion — great orator — Reagan, leading the
South — scarecrow,
Midwest — Dorothy, and the
Industrial Workers — Tin Man.
It is all very staight- forward.
On the other hand, it is also the story of an almost flawless insurgency conducted against nearly impossible odds.
;-)
WIZARD OF OZ.
1939. Judy Garland, Ray Bolger
A young girl hallucinates and is transported to a strange land, where she kills the first person she meets. She then teams-up with 3 total strangers in costumes to kill again.
It was the original chick flick. Two women locked in a battle to the death over a pair of shoes.
Wicked Witch of the West... Nancy Pelosi. Coincidence?
While I was in graduate school I took a course in Theory of Games, which is a mathematical discipline dealing with conflict situations. Given the matrix of possible actions by each of the two competitors, and the payoffs for each combination of actions, the theory will tell you what is the best strategy to play.
It occurred to me that if the two players had differing information about the payoffs, each could think he is winning, but both are actually losing. It took me several years to do anything with the idea, but eventually I wrote it into a story and sold it to ANALOG science fiction (spaceships, interstellar war, etc.).
As it happened, the story was published during the Vietnam war. A reviewer insisted that it was an anti-Vietnam story, mirroring the "no-win" war being fought there.
Now, who knows more about what the story was about -- the author or the reviewer?