ceebeegee | Entries tagged with oz

So I Netflixed The Wiz and watched it this week for the first time since I was a kid. WHOAH. Very, very strange movie--I've never seen the original stage version but Duncan said it was very different...and I guess it's set in Kansas? Which is sort of weird as well--Kansas is pretty white, isn't it? I will say, I like that they reset it in NYC, and there's a lot to explore there. But why make it so freakishly terrifying? That subway sequence, AAAAHHHH! Good Lord, it is terrifying! Creepy homeless peddler guy with his puppets that get bigger...and bigger...and then start CHASING them, Jesus! And then the trash cans and even the pillars start attacking them! Why in the hell would they make this for kids? That's actually my biggest criticism of the movie--it is not appropriate or interesting for kids (a very cold-feeling movie), and I don't get the G-rating. There are way too many long, boring stretches--what was in the LA water in the late '70s, Star Trek: The Motion Picture has the same problem.

But I don't think it's horrible, and I think its imdb rating (4.7) is way too low. It's got a definite adult sensibility--the part when they reach the Emerald City, with those gyrating disco dancers, is wild! Oz goes to Studio 54. I also liked the reinterpretation of the poppy scene, crack hos seducing them with heroin. (Again, this is for kids?!) The cabs--one of the "external reviews" listed in imdb said something about how this was a joke on how you can never find a cab when you need one in NYC. Uh, I thought it was about how specifically black people have a hard time getting cabs to stop, not that they're never around. (Which is also very clever.) Michael Jackson is fantastic as the Scarecrow--in fact the Tinman and Lion are also terrific. (Sadly, Diana Ross is deadly dull as Dorothy and far too old. Stephanie Mills would've been cute as hell.) Some of the numbers are great--I especially loved the Munchkin number with all those cheering, tumbling moppets. (Although when the first Munchkin reveals how they were "imprisoned"--they were caught tagging the playground and turned into graffiti--I had a sneaking sympathy for Evermeane. Little shits, stop vandalizing public property!)

So I finished Wicked a few days ago. Um...hmmm. Color me somewhat underwhelmed. I love the premise, and the weird, carnival-mirror version of Oz is a great idea and fun to explore. But I do not find Elphaba a satisfactory protagonist. It took me a little while to figure out why and it's this--she doesn't do that much, and what little she does do is never carried to its dramatic conclusion. In college she carries on Dr. Dillamond's research--does this go anywhere? Other than teaching Chister how to mimic, not really. In the Emerald City she does one fully realized thing--she has the affair with Fyero (I guess you could say she falls in love, allows herself to be vulnerable). But the dramatic conclusion to that, the apology to Sarima--piddles off into nowhere. She lives there for years and never apologizes and makes her own peace with what she did--yes, I realize that Sarima wouldn't let her but you have to develop that, you have to raise the stakes. If she couldn't do the thing that brought her to the Vinkus, why did she live there for so many years then? Did her feelings change then, did she somehow come to terms with what she did? You can't just have her plop down and then not raise the tension, develop it further. Getting back to her time in the Emerald City, she most noticeably doesn't do something--she fails to kill Madame Morrible. Of course later on she does--or does she? He tries to make it a big mystery--did she or didn't she kill Morrible at the end--but her pathetically bragging about it, while still unsure of what she actually did, just undermined the whole thing and I didn't care in the end. I shouldn't feel that way about the protagonist confronting a major villain.

She really doesn't do much magic at all, and doesn't seem very devoted to or even interested in its practice or study. In fact other than Animal rights, I'm not sure what she stood for.

The lack of decisive action is really noticeable when Dorothy enters the picture. All she does is track her and wait for her! She doesn't do SHIT to confront her, stop her, talk to her--that whole subplot was a major disappointment. I found myself much more interested in Dorothy than in Elphaba. (I will say, I thought the whole section where she sends the dogs, the crows and the bees gripping--like her destiny was inevitably approaching. Of course this was helped by everyone's knowing how the Witch ends up.)

She's really not a terribly likable or admirable character, IMO. Maguire's elliptical writing style doesn't help that much--sure, Baum was WAY in the other direction as a writer (but of course he wrote for kids), rarely did Baum write anything particularly witty or clever. But Maguire seems to be opaque for the sake of being opaque. It's kind of annoying, there's no payoff. Why did Morrible enchant the three girls and why didn't they end up carrying out her plans? What was the point of the Philosophy Club sequence and how did it affect the participants? Why did her friendship with Glinda peter out? And why am I supposed to care about Sarima and her sisters and the children?

Although reading the synopsis of the musical--wow. They really DID change a lot! It's interesting, at first I thought "why the hell did Maguire allow that?" then I thought "well, they aren't his characters to begin with!" I did think the aftermath of the Witch's murder was beautifully depicted, and it's a shame that was changed.

I've been reading Wicked lately which Rachel was kind enough to lend to me. Very interesting book--very, very interesting. I'm just not sure if I like it yet. I think it's a fascinating take on the Oz universe although it seems to favor the movie over the books in some respects. The movie conflates the unnamed Good Witch of the North with Glinda, who is the Good Witch of the South. However as I was saying on Facebook, it's fascinating how he takes little things that are mentioned and explores them much more fully. Case in point: there is ONE throwaway mention of Krumbic Witches in the original series--in the last book, Ozma and Dorothy are confronting this snotty teenage witch/queen, Coo-Ee-Oh, who terrorizes her subjects in her little queendom way up in the Gillikin country. She says "I am a Krumbic Witch--the only Krumbic Witch in the world--and I fear the magic of no other creature that exists!" And that is IT, the only mention in all of the Baum books. But Maguire really develops this--it's a belief system, geographical features are named after the Krumbic. Very interesting.

And it's worth upending the Oz universe and examining some of its assumptions and biases. Talking with my mother, I realize how bizarrely anti-intellectual the books come off as sometimes. We'd been talking about the better books in the series, and she's never read Tik-Tok of Oz. TToO is actually based on one of Baum's earlier shows--it's about one of the minor Queens of Oz (Queen Ann of Oogaboo, reigning over "eighteen men, twenty-seven women and forty-four children") who decides she wants to conquer the rest of Oz. (Yet another strong female figure, a la General Jinjur.) Glinda sees what she's doing and casts a spell that makes them wander way off-course, across the desert, and they end up running into Betsy and Hank, Tik-Tok, one of my favorite characters, Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter, and the Shaggy Man. The Shaggy Man always got on my nerves a bit, mainly because frankly I'm shallow and dislike ill-kempt people. But he has a tendency in this book, and none of the others, to quell people in a really annoying way. Someone will ask a question and Shaggy will jump in from across the room and say "Don't ask that--don't ask her or me either."

Then, after a pause, she added: "But where do you s'pose we're going to, Your Maj'sty?"

"Don't ask her that, please don't!" said Shaggy, who was not too far away to overhear them. "And please don't ask me why, either."

"Why?" said Betsy.

"No one can tell where we are going until we get there," replied Shaggy...

Um--what? How about minding your own damn business, Shaggy! He does this a couple of times on TToO. It reminds me of when I was at the West End Dinner Theater and Kim K. and I would talk about--oh, politics or T.S. Eliot or something, and Krissi D., never known for her intellectual tendencies, would whine (literally, she had this very distinctive squeaky voice) "Why are you talking about that? Don't talk about that."

Anyway, I remember reading an essay in Salon comparing the Narnia and Oz books, and one thing stuck with me. the essay said that in Oz, people are always declaring themselves--who they are and what they are. "Here in Oz, we..." "You're in the Land of Oz now where we..." This is a little mean-spirited but hilarious nonetheless:

Then there's the universal narcissism of the characters. Social conversation in Oz consists almost entirely of creatures explaining themselves to each other. It weirdly resembles the brandishing of identity credentials seen in certain graduate seminars, with "as a working-class lesbian ..." replaced by "as a scarecrow ..." In a typical disquisition, the straw man announces, "I am never hungry, and it is a lucky thing I am not. For my mouth is only painted, and if I should cut a hole in it so I could eat, the straw I am stuffed with would come out, and that would spoil the shape of my head." I mean, I love the books but yes, people ARE what they ARE, they never really change in the Oz universe. And they certainly don't grow, which creeped me out even as a child. Baum explains that when Oz became a fairyland, people stopped growing--nobody ever died, nobody got bigger and--this was creepiest of all--babies who were babies never got older. As organically feminist as the Oz books are (notice how most of the strong, kick-ass characters are female? Baum's mother in law was a suffragette and had a great influence on him), it's obvious the man has never had to watch a baby all day!

And don't get me started on the completely WTF? pacifist slant of The Emerald City of Oz (which I rave about in this entry, still so hilarious!). Okay, to sum up, the Nome King and a bunch of very, very evil allies--I mean, truly evil--are tunneling under the desert so they can invade Oz and enslave/murder everyone. Ozma happens to catch wind of this via the Magic Picture (don't ask me why Glinda wasn't on top of this) and she's all "hmm, isn't it sad that someone can be so angry?" and goes on her merry way, picking roses and whatnot. When Dorothy hears the news, she's devastated, as are Scarecrow and Tin Man. They, and all the others (Wizard, etc.) have a powwow to discuss what's to be done:

"Our enemies will be here sooner than I expected. What do you advise me to do?"

"It is now too late to assemble our people," said the Tin Woodman, despondently. "If you had allowed me to arm and drill my Winkies, we might have put up a good fight and destroyed many of our enemies before we were conquered."

"The Munchkins are good fighters, too," said Omby Amby; "and so are the Gillikins."

"But I do not wish to fight," declared Ozma, firmly. "No one has the right to destroy any living creatures, however evil they may be, or to hurt them or make them unhappy. I will not fight, even to save my kingdom."

ARE YOU F-ING KIDDING ME? You won't fight *even* to save all the innocents in your coutnry FROM getting killed? Oh good LORD. Look, even if you posit that self-defense is "evil" (a highly questionable statement), sometimes you have to do "evil" in order to prevent a worse evil. I have a feeling your subjects might feel a little differently about being handed over so blithely to the Nome and Growliwogs and Phanphasms just so your conscience is clear.

It gets better. Scarecrow has a genuinely good idea (not all of Baum's endings are as clever as this--frequently good conquers evil because of a completely new magical device that just enters out of nowhere (Rinkitink in Oz, an otherwise excellent book, is somewhat marred by its Dorothy-ex-machina resolution). Because the tunnel is going to emerge right on the royal grounds in front of the Water of Oblivion, he proposes to fill the tunnel with dust so that the armies get very thirsty--as soon as they exit the tunnel, they make a mad rush for the Fountain. Having drunk from it, they've now forgotten everything they've ever known and so are no longer evil, nor do they have any plans now to conquer Oz. In fact they're like little children now. And this is seen as a good thing:

"But, best of all," said Dorothy, "the wicked people have all forgotten their wickedness, and will not wish to hurt any one after this."

"True, Princess," declared the Shaggy Man. "It seems to me that to have reformed all those evil characters is more important than to have saved Oz."

Oh, shut up Shaggy, that's not really reform--they didn't genuinely repent, they didn't make a conscious choice to turn away from evil. That's more like a lobotomy!

The Oz books are great--I've read all 14? 15? of them and have all but two. My favorite is probably The Emerald City of Oz--Baum's imagination was on overdrive for that one. He thought it was going to be the last one in the series--I figured this out as a kid because he ends it with Glinda making Oz invisible to the outside world, and as a result he can no longer make contact and write down the stories. (He later had to reconsider, due to money problems, and wrote 8 more--he explained it by saying a child suggested he contact Oz via wireless.) There are dueling stories in it--Dorothy and her aunt and uncle come to live in Oz and then she takes a long tour of the countryside, and at the same time, the Nome King enlists the help of some truly bad baddies to conquer Oz. The Dorothy travelogue storyline is a diversion from the action of the story, but wonderfully written--Baum's writing had weaknesses, certainly, but his imaginatin was just outstanding. Dorothy visits places like Utensia, where all the inhabitants are knives, forks, etc. The Baum punning is out of control in this chapter:

The Captain answered, "It is so quiet here that we are all getting rusty for want of amusement. For my part, I prefer to see stirring times."

"Naturally," returned the cleaver, with a nod. "I have always said, Captain, without a bit of irony, that you are a sterling officer and a solid citizen, bowled and polished to a degree. But what do you expect me to do with these prisoners?"

"That is for you to decide," declared the Captain. "You are the King."

"To be sure; to be sure," muttered the cleaver, musingly. "As you say, we have had dull times since the steel and grindstone eloped and left us.

And:

"Compose yourself, Mr. Paprica," advised the King. "Your remarks are piquant and highly-seasoned, but you need a scattering of commonsense.

I know it's a little much but Baum's unabashed delight in these silly puns is contagious.

Dorothy visits many other mini-kigdoms, like the Cuttenclips (live paperdolls), Fuddlecumjig (live, 3-D jigsaw puzzle people) and my favorite, Bunbury, where all the inhabitants are pastries. The Bunbury section is hilarious--Toto, understandably, goes a little nuts and attacks one of the citizens:

Just then a dreadful scream was heard, and Dorothy turned hastily around to find a scene of great excitement a little way down the street. The people were crowding around Toto and throwing at him everything they could find at hand. They pelted the little dog with hard-tack, crackers, and even articles of furniture which were hard baked and heavy enough for missiles.

Toto howled a little as the assortment of bake stuff struck him; but he stood still, with head bowed and tail between his legs, until Dorothy ran up and inquired what the matter was.

"Matter!" cried a rye loafer, indignantly, "why the horrid beast has eaten three of our dear Crumpets, and is now devouring a Salt-rising Biscuit!"

"Oh, Toto! How could you?" exclaimed Dorothy, much distressed.

Toto's mouth was full of his salt-rising victim; so he only whined and wagged his tail.

During all of this, the Nome King's General Guph has been making the rounds of all the baddies in the area--the Whimsies, who have itty bitty heads and wear giant plaster heads over them but fool no one, the Growleywogs who are incredibly strong, and the Phanphasms who are the worst (and most powerful) of the lot. Each time Guph has to promise more and more of the spoils to convince them to join in the endeavor, and when he's talking to the Phanphasms, the Head says "what can you give us that we can't already take for ourself?" Guph thinks, and replies:

"Permit me to call your attention to the exquisite joy of making the happy unhappy," said he at last. "Consider the pleasure of destroying innocent and harmless people."

Wow! That's some existential stuff for a kid's story!

There's another assistant on this floor named Evelyn, and as I walked by, someone called her "Ev" which got me to thinking about the Kingdom of Ev which borders the Land of Oz in the Oz books. We first hear about Ev in the third book, Ozma of Oz, which is about Ozma's mission to try to liberate the Royal Family of Ev from the cluthes of the Nome King who had transformed them all into brik-a-brac. Baum was an uneven writer (the inconsistencies drove me nuts, even as a kid) but he certainly knew how to intrigue a child--I loved the symmetric nature of the Royal Family. There was one mother (the King of Ev had sold his family to the Nome King, and then jumped into the sea) and 10 royal children (5 of each gender, naturally), all with names that started with Ev--Evanna, Evring, Evrose, Evington--and the King turned them all into purple ornaments. While they're in captivity, the Kingdom is "ruled" by a very lazy Princess, Langwidere, who has 30 different heads, but can only wear one at a time. Eventually Ozma and her company liberate the Ev Royal Family, and the oldest son is introduced to his subjects. I love this passage:

They found the Princess Langwidere in her mirrored chamber, where she was admiring one of her handsomest heads—-one with rich chestnut hair, dreamy walnut eyes and a shapely hickory-nut nose. She was very glad to be relieved of her duties to the people of Ev, and the Queen graciously permitted her to retain her rooms and her cabinet of heads as long as she lived.

Then the Queen took her eldest son out upon a balcony that overlooked the crowd of subjects gathered below, and said to them:

“Here is your future ruler, King Evardo Fifteenth. He is fifteen years of age, has fifteen silver buckles on his jacket and is the fifteenth Evardo to rule the land of Ev.”

The people shouted their approval fifteen times, and even the Wheelers, some of whom were present, loudly promised to obey the new King.

So the Queen placed a big crown of gold, set with rubies, upon Evardo’s head, and threw an ermine robe over his shoulders, and proclaimed him King; and he bowed gratefully to all his subjects and then went away to see if he could find any cake in the royal pantry.

The kid in me loves the exacting numerology, but what happens when he turns 16? Does he get a new jacket? But the ordinals would still be off, unless he leaps forward in time to reign after the next King named Evardo.