The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Anne Hathaway is not a horrible narrator. When she is narrating lines of text, her voice is quite pleasant, melodious, and very easy on the ears. Her vocalizations of the characters, however, leave a lot to be desired. The Lion has a Jewish twang, while the Scarecrow definitely has a Brooklyn lilt. Dorothy sounds like she is always going to cry, and the Tin Woodman sounds like he is also constantly on the verge of tears. Had Ms. Hathaway not tried so hard to differentiate the voices, the entire performance would have been much more even and bearable. Unfortunately, her voices becomes so distracting that one begins to cringe at the mere thought of more dialogue. This is not the type of narrator experience one should have when one is show more already highly antagonistic towards the story.

That being said, there are some pleasant surprises that slightly redeem the story. Knowing about the hypothesized allegorical connections before listening or reading the original version makes one focus on the multiple mentions of silver, green, and gold throughout the story. (Unfortunately, whether the allegory is true or not is not something a generic reader will ever be able to discern.) Then there is the addition of a backstory for the Flying Monkeys, which makes them less frightening and much more interesting characters. The details of the book omitted from the movie really do add a bit more credence to the story, although that is not saying much.

The main issue with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is that it passes itself off as an adult warning tale hidden within the confines of a children’s story, and neither are very good stories or warnings. There is no doubt that the use of color is a deliberate choice, and there is plenty of symbolism throughout the story. However, it is obtuse symbolism. Even literary scholars do not agree on Baum’s ultimate message. There is something fundamentally wrong and almost subliminal about Baum’s motivation when no one can interpret his message. As for the child’s tale portion, there are aspects of the story that seem questionable for its audience. The killing, the slavery, and the trickery are all one thing, but the characters themselves are also problematic. They are embarrassingly clueless and naïve, something which just does not mesh well with today’s information-driven culture. They do not question authority, and they earn rewards for their lack of challenge. They are nothing but blind followers, not the mindset most parents want to teach their children. The children’s story may have been appropriate for the time in which it was written, but it does not cross generations at all.

I am not and have never been a fan of the movie version of The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy and her friends drive me batty. There is something about her voice that makes me cringe. The story is too extreme in its lessons of good and evil for enjoyment, and while the cinematography is gorgeous, it does nothing to improve the overall plot. I was really hoping the combination of Anne Hathaway and the original version of the story would be enough to change my mind. Alas, it is not enough, and my attempt to at least understand the fascination of this weird and pitiful story is at an end. show less

Enduring story, but between the ever earnest Dorothy and Gregory Maguire's Elphaba, I'm siding with the Wicked Witch of the West (whose great film lines - 'and your little dog too!' - started out as 'Watch out - here I go!'). And why would anyone have a burning desire to return to Kansas? Love the illustrations though.

Low rating on this one, because while it's a kids book, I'm reading it with a critical eye to all the weird plot holes. I get that it is an episodic story with each chapter having some kind of small but surmountable obstacle, but it just makes No Sense as a whole story.

I have an issue with 'it's okay to kill people if they are evil', and that definitely turns up more than once. And 'good people can be trusted with too much power, because they are good'. Although that latter one at least is followed up by the 'good' people doing small things with their too much power, and then handing the power on.

In terms of topics I think would need discussing with kids - one character is emotional about killing a small animal, and then turns around show more and has no qualms about killing two others. And isn't happy about the lion going off to find something to eat. I didn't notice any explicit bigotry, which is a surprise in a kids book of this era. show less

The Wizard of Oz, illustrated by Michael Hague.

I grew up reading the Oz books - L. Frank Baum's fourteen stories set in that magical country, as well as Ruth Plumly Thompson's twenty-one subsequent tales - and have always had a soft spot for them. This first and best-known entry in the series, immortalized in the musical film made of it in 1939, was the beginning of it all. As a child, I owned this edition by Michael Hague, given to me by my grandparents on my seventh birthday. Although I have since read the facsimile reproduction of the original first edition, with the charming artwork by W.W. Denslow, Hague's illustrations will always be connected to Oz, in my mind. It is a cruel irony that now, just as I am embarking on a show more retrospective rereading project, I have had the misfortune to lose my childhood copy of this book. I would have enjoyed contrasting and comparing it with the Denslow... show less

If Philip K Dick and Hieronymus Bosch collaborated on a childrens' book, this is what it would look like. L Frank Baum's 1901 apocalyptic psychadelic freakout classic signals the end of the well-ordered and reasonable Victorian world. Aguished midwestern teen Dorothy, raised by her Aunt and "Uncle" in the depleted midwest wastelands escapes into an allegorical crazyworld to befriend the walking, breathing icons of her adolescent insecurities: cowardace, stupidity, and heartlessness (literally!). To conquer her fears and return to reality, she embarks on an odyssey highlighted by confrontation with chimeric tiger/bears, a meeting with the flawed dictator of her fantasyland, and in the culminating scene, she participates in the homicide show more of her own alter-ego: the Wicked Witch of the West (a scene which is reprised well in Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 [book:Fight Club: a novel|5759]). In 2009, this would be called schizoid disassociative disorder, and not surprisingly, The Wizard of Oz *IS* mentioned as a trigger stimulus in [book:Thanks For The Memories... The Truth Has Set Me Free The Memoirs of Bob Hope's and Henry Kissinger's Mind-Controlled Slave|920701].
The Wizard of Oz was written between Japan's crushing victories in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894) and the Russo-Japanese War (1905). The Sino-Japanese War showcased the rapid strides Japan had taken towards modernization, beginning in the Meji Era (1868), and the war concluded with Japan routing the Chinese navy, dethroning their ruler in Korea, and seizing Manchuria. [book:The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895: Perceptions Power and Primacy|164645] Just a few years later, Russia's humiliation at the hands of the Japanese navy was the first time a Western power had been so decisively decimated by an Eastern power since the Muslims took Constantinople in 1453. Western anguish over Japan's meteoric ascendency in this era cannot be overstated. It was a veritable earthquake in diplomatic circles, and seems to have loomed large in Baum's mind, given his incessant symbology hammering away at this, including: the East vs. West witches, the China village, the Emerald (jade) City, the Wizard's hegemony over Oz through control of technology, and the Lion (an effete British Empire, unable to challange the flying monkeys -which work EVEN BETTER ,post-Pearl Harbor, as avatars of Japanese militarism). In the book, Dorothy's shoes are silver, which some believe is an obscure reference to the silver standard- a hotly debated monetary policy issue at the time of writing. By the 1930's when the movie was made, the silver standard issue was no longer in the public eye. With color film available, MGM studio heads made the shoes (ultimately the vehicles of her escape) ruby red. It has been pointed out that the red showed up better on screen than silver, but coincidentally or not, red also seems a better choice, serving as a reference to the iconic Japanese song, Akai Kutsu ("red shoes"), which laments "the girl in the red shoes" who takes a voyage with a foreigner from the West, never to return. Check out the lyrics (with translation), and even listen to the song at Akai Kutsu link

In present day, we have grown accustomed to this sort of psycho-chaotic political angst literature, perhaps in part because of the annual television broadcasts of The Wizard over these past forty years. Sure, Philip K Dick, Aldous Huxley, William Gibson, and H P Lovecraft wrote plenty of even more f'd up sh*t later on, but by that time, the public had been completely desensitized. Baum, on the other hand, was writing in the friggin' VICTORIAN age! Counterculture childrens' television moguls Sid and Marty Krofft were very influenced by the Oz movie, and Sid even contributes to [book:Short and Sweet: The Life and Times of the Lollipop Munchkin|397780]. The Kroffts loosely based their early 1970's television show "Liddsville" on The Wizard of Oz, but re-cast it with a male protagonist, and dropped all the anguish about Japanese expansionism, despite the impending juggernaut Japanese economy of the 1980's. (A samauri helmet character does appear in one episode, however. Learn more about it, if you like, with[book:Pufnstuf Other Stuff: The Weird and Wonderful World of Sid Marty Krofft|1064718] ) Liddsville didn't seem to work well in the video format, and failed in my opinion, because it wasn't angry enough. show less

A perfectly pleasant, though unremarkable, read. I think this book suffers from the world it created being so well-known by modern readers. I probably would have been more enchanted by Munchkinland and the Emerald City and so on, had I not already seen the movie several times and been a huge fan of the musical Wicked. I enjoyed getting to juxtapose the events of the book and the events of the movie, and I enjoyed the more obscure sections of the book that weren't represented one to one in the movie. Seems like a perfectly fine children's book, with an easy enough plot to follow, some repetition to help guide a young reader along, and plenty of whimsy.

The introduction by the author that was included in my edition had Baum stating that show more his goal while writing this story was "solely to please the children of today" and to write a "modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out." In that sense, I'd say Baum achieved his goal, though I'm not sure we agree on what exactly makes a good children's story. Many kids simply love being frightened, in a safe environment, such as with a parent reading them a story, and that can add to the "wonderment and joy" of their experience. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by contrast to the tales of Grimm and Andersen, to whom Baum is directly comparing himself, feels somewhat flattened. While there are still highs and lows, the stakes never feel insurmountable and consequences seem to be nonexistent. As a result, after the first few setbacks are easily overcome by our heroes, the book becomes almost boring.

Anyway, I read this as preparation for reading Gregory Maguire's Wicked, so, as a book that I felt I needed to check off my list, as I said, it was perfectly pleasant. show less

Book 11 - L.Frank Baum - The Wizard of Oz

Many, many moons ago when I was a lad and the world was still in black and white I was one of the main characters in my primary school play of The Wizard of Oz. I played the Scarecrow of course...if I only had a brain. After a slight diversion into the serious world of Mr Grisham I decided it was time to return to Oz.

Now we all know the story...don’t we ? With Silver Shoes, the deadly poppy field, the dainty china country and the country of the quadlings - this was all new to me. And it is gruesome...properly gruesome with wolves getting their heads cut off and the giant spider...eughhh.

It is also remarkably witty...just after Scarecrow gets his brains...

“Why are those needles and pins show more sticking out of your head?" asked the Tin Woodman.

"That is proof that he is sharp," remarked the Lion.”

Loved this diversion into the classic children’s tale show less