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Sasha's Reviews > The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Oz, #1)
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It's Alice in Wonderland for Americans! No seriously, that's literally what Frank Baum was out for, which is...fine I guess? I mean raise your hand if you were like every time I read Alice in Wonderland I'm like, this is so fucking unAmerican, there hasn't even been one scene set in Kansas.
Which by the way is not at all presented sympathetically, and of course how would you even do that, we all know what the deal is with Kansas, but here's Dorothy:
So, I mean, that's some pretty shady patriotism, is all. The scarecrow is all,
lol. The thing that's always pissed me off about the scarecrow, the tin man and the cowardly lion is that the first two are missing a brain and a heart and therefore by the laws of parallel metaphor the lion should also be missing an organ. Guts? What's a spleen for again? Anyway it feels like Baum sortof punted there, and in fact the thing with this whole book is that it's not that great, honestly. Like, the images are great. The metaphors. The thing with Oz himself is so wonderful, right? This great and terrible Oz, and then Toto the meat dog (that's what she calls him!) knocks over a screen and there he is, just a pathetic old man. That's such a resonant image, and it's useful for every authority figure currently in existence who isn't Angela Merkel.
But Alice has good images too, and Baum has nowhere near Lewis Carroll's delirious feel for writing. You could probably track the quality of children's literature by the number of tattoos grown-ups have of them, right?
Google results for:
"Alice in Wonderland" tattoo: 16,500,000
"Wizard of Oz" tattoo: 624,000
"Flowers in the Attic" tattoo: 345,000
"Wind in the Willows" tattoo: 337,000
"Harold and the Purple Crayon" tattoo: 95,000
That's an exactly accurate ranking of the quality of these stories.
So the story is great but the book isn't. A lot of perfunctory tasks are perfunctorily performed. Packs of wolves and giant spiders are dispatched without any real sense of urgency. A great deal of attention is paid to dinner. And y'know the illustrations are bullshit too, if we're being real here.
That's only an okay picture. Ooh, you wanna see something cool though? Here's some dude named Graham Rawle with the Emerald City:
See if you can figure out I know!
So it's Alice in Wonderland without very much of the wonder, is the upshot here. Baum has great ideas but he hasn't made great literature. You can go ahead and just watch that fucking musical again and not read this.
Which by the way is not at all presented sympathetically, and of course how would you even do that, we all know what the deal is with Kansas, but here's Dorothy:
No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country
So, I mean, that's some pretty shady patriotism, is all. The scarecrow is all,
If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all.
lol. The thing that's always pissed me off about the scarecrow, the tin man and the cowardly lion is that the first two are missing a brain and a heart and therefore by the laws of parallel metaphor the lion should also be missing an organ. Guts? What's a spleen for again? Anyway it feels like Baum sortof punted there, and in fact the thing with this whole book is that it's not that great, honestly. Like, the images are great. The metaphors. The thing with Oz himself is so wonderful, right? This great and terrible Oz, and then Toto the meat dog (that's what she calls him!) knocks over a screen and there he is, just a pathetic old man. That's such a resonant image, and it's useful for every authority figure currently in existence who isn't Angela Merkel.
But Alice has good images too, and Baum has nowhere near Lewis Carroll's delirious feel for writing. You could probably track the quality of children's literature by the number of tattoos grown-ups have of them, right?
Google results for:
"Alice in Wonderland" tattoo: 16,500,000
"Wizard of Oz" tattoo: 624,000
"Flowers in the Attic" tattoo: 345,000
"Wind in the Willows" tattoo: 337,000
"Harold and the Purple Crayon" tattoo: 95,000
That's an exactly accurate ranking of the quality of these stories.
So the story is great but the book isn't. A lot of perfunctory tasks are perfunctorily performed. Packs of wolves and giant spiders are dispatched without any real sense of urgency. A great deal of attention is paid to dinner. And y'know the illustrations are bullshit too, if we're being real here.
That's only an okay picture. Ooh, you wanna see something cool though? Here's some dude named Graham Rawle with the Emerald City:
See if you can figure out I know!
So it's Alice in Wonderland without very much of the wonder, is the upshot here. Baum has great ideas but he hasn't made great literature. You can go ahead and just watch that fucking musical again and not read this.
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carol.
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Dec 14, 2017 07:38AM
As a young reader, I really couldn't get into this series at all. Just 'meh.' The movie scared the daylights out of me, though.
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Yeah, that sounds about right. You never hear anyone getting nostalgic about reading this, the way they do about Alice in Wonderland or other children's classics.
Carol: did you see the sequel? The original was only scary in a 'children can be scared of weird things' way; the sequel, though, was absolutely terrifying. Children chased by evil punk clowns with wheels for hands. People turned into household ornaments. People having their heads eaten. Dorothy makes a friend for herself by giving life to the decapitated head of a moose and sews it onto a settee because that girl has issues. Instead of 'there's a storm', the Kansas bit is 'Dorothy falls in a river escaping from the lunatic asylum where they keep electricuting her', and instead of 'happily ever after' there's 'haunted by hallucinations while the mental health nurse is trapped in a cage'. Best children's film ever...
WHAT THE HELL ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE, GOOD GOD
...btw I also found the flying monkeys in the movie super terrifying when I was young.Things I Found Very Frightening
- That scene in the library at the beginning of Ghostbusters
- The video for White Wedding by Billy Idol
- Flying monkeys
- This one scene in a movie where a lady is killed with an electric toothbrush? I looked it up and it's called Pandemonium and it was supposed to be funny but I didn't think it was funny.
- The original Blob
- that scene in ET where all the dudes in hazmat suits rush into the house
Wastrel wrote: "Carol: did you see the sequel? Best children's film ever..."Oh my. They made more than one movie from the book series? I distinctly remember hiding behind the chair in the living room the first time I watched Wizard of Oz. Those flying monkeys were freaky. I was maybe 7 years or so. I can't even imagine my reaction to wheels for hands and the moose head.
We now interrupt this post to go look up White Wedding on youtube.
Okay, I totally get that reaction to White Wedding, although I might have felt the same way about marriage. That was some freaky imagery.
Carol. wrote: "Wastrel wrote: "Carol: did you see the sequel? Best children's film ever..."Oh my. They made more than one movie from the book series? I distinctly remember hiding behind the chair in the living ..."
They've made about 20 movies. But the second-most-famous is 1985's Return to Oz. Here are some clips of this beloved children's film...
The film is noted for its "strikingly dark, imaginative imagery, pummeling sound design, blistering score and Oscar-nominated special effects". (the score, also called 'killer gothic-tinged', is by David Shire, famous for thriller scores like The Taking of Pelham 123 and The Conversation). Reviewers have showered it with such praise as "bleak, creepy, and occasionally terrifying", "the disturbing/comforting ratio tilts conclusively towards the former", and "children are sure to be startled by its bleakness".
It didn't get great reviews at first, but it's aquired a cult following over the years, in part because it's seen as much closer to the spirit of the books than the more famous film is.
However, some changes are made. For instance, in the book, apparently, the villain is guarded by an army of women - easily defeated by showing them a mouse (because they're women, the entire army has to run away when they see a mouse, because women are all terrified into hysterics by mice). And then the child hero is forced to undergo a magical sex change operation to turn him into a Princess. That's not in the film, because, hey, they didn't want it to be disturbing.
And then the child hero is forced to undergo a magical sex change operation to turn him into a Princess. That's not in the film, because, hey, they didn't want it to be disturbing. Yeah, gender bending is so much more frightful than cutting off a moose head and sewing it to a sofa.
Good heavens, those clips are terrifying. Tim Burton must had to watch those as a child.
I don't know about all this other stuff, but '' (1978) is my all-time-fav adaptation.
So if you were forced to pick one tattoo out of the five you Googled, which would you pick? Would it be based on the story you most liked, or the visual aesthetic?;)
Ha...well, first of all, I have one tattoo and it's Tigger. ("Winnie the pooh" tattoo: 3,550,000 results for 2nd place and it's funny that I didn't think to look that up in the first place.) I got it in high school and I regret nothing.2nd I wouldn't, tattoos are over and anyway all of these (including Tigger) are cliched except for Flowers in the Attic which would be funny but also it would require just a great deal of explanation.
3rd but under the rules of your game, it would be Alice in Wonderland, based on both criteria (story + visuals). Jeez, I can even be specific: it would be this scene.
“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.�
It's all cliched, but that's a terrific conversation to have.
Your turn!
Tigger is fun, but the Cheshire Cat is a little scary for permanent inking?As for me, in the last two or three years, I've occasionally asked myself if I'd ever have one, and if so, what. But I honestly can't think of anything I'd be certain to love enough to have for ever. If forced, I'd probably pick something a bit abstract, or inter-twining leaves. Definitely not words.
Abstract is probably a pretty good idea. And I say tattoos are dumb but also go for it, who cares? anyway, life is pretty scary and permanent so ¯\_(�)_/¯
Alex wrote: "anyway, life is pretty scary and permanent so ¯\_(�)_/¯"I hate to break it to you, but only one part of that is true!
wait what?does this mean I have to finish reading Proust
Alex wrote: "wait what?does this mean I have to finish reading Proust"
Or it might mean there's no point finishing Proust.
(I haven't.)
But you gave it 4 stars! Your review had me LOLing AGAIN. I learn so much, even when I'm laughing ... my kind of learning.
Amen! And, 4 stars is at least one star too generous.
The one thing I want to say here is that just last week Kansas elected a and I feel like I may have underestimated them. I am sorry, Kansas. That was a boss move
which brought us back to
Is it wrong that I can’t concentrate on anything but how amazing her arm looks??
Fully understandable! How bad do you want to, like, have two glasses of wine and talk shit about Republicans with her?
