So, I was talking to my friend the other day and she said to be careful going home. I rolled my eyes. She called me “Dorothy”… I don’t know about you, but when I hear “Dorothy”, I think “Golden Girls” so I’m like “say what??”
She’s like “you know from the movie ‘The Wizard of Oz’. Don’t want you to get sucked up in a cloud” as she’s spinning her finger like a whirlwind.
Sadly, I am not a fan of the movie.
I mean think about it: the villain is the wicked witch of the west. She is feared by all the munchkins (more on them later) but she has every right to be wicked. She is literally green with envy. All she desires is what is rightfully hers. In this case, she has just violently lost her sister and all she wants is her shoes. They should be hers without stipulation, without hesitation.
And my friend responded with “she didn’t say ‘please’.”
Seriously?!? When does saying ‘please’ work? When has it worked for you?
And really, she shouldn’t have even had to ask for those shoes. Glenda, the “Good” witch, stole them off of her dead sister’s feet and put them on the killer’s feet!! Cold!!
Talk about insult to injury. She’s mourning the loss of her sister, her friend, and apparently the only person who likes her. And she has to witness those special shoes being ripped off her sister’s corpse and not just given away, but given to Dorothy with an enchantment that the only way they could be returned to their rightful owner is for the wearer to be dead or dismembered.
Now, if you kill my sister, hell hath no fury…there are no limits to where I will go to get justice. You haven’t seen wicked yet.
I digress; I apologise.
Just look at the “Good” witch. What makes her “good”? Just because she wears pink, has a cheerful voice and travels in a bubble instead of on a broom, she’s automatically good? Please. She’s deceitful and manipulative. She’s baited the “wicked” witch with her sister’s shoes and used Dorothy’s ignorance as a pawn in her game.
She sent Dorothy on a wild goose chase to find the wizard, who is an imposter, (again, more on that later) through all kinds of perils, all for her own amusement.
Glenda also uses the munchkins to feed her already overinflated ego. She literally towers over them and uses her size to show their inadequacies. She acts as though she is good and on their side by standing up to the wicked witch, but in reality, they are in no real danger from the Wicked Witch of the West. The real danger is trusting someone who thinks so highly of herself that she cannot see her misjudgement of the situation, nor can she admit that she is wrong. The real danger is trusting someone who manipulates you for personal gain.
I mentioned she uses Dorothy as a pawn in her game…she does. She dangles the ruby slippers in front of the wicked witch and then puts them on Dorothy’s feet telling her they are stuck and they are Dorothy’s ticket home. She does this to thumb her nose at the wicked witch…saying I’m smarter, better, and more loved than you. She lied to Dorothy to get revenge against the wicked witch.
And look at how the munchkins depend on Glenda for protection. As long as she is around, they don’t have to worry… but their troubles always seem to follow their “savior”.
The munchkins terrify me. First of all, no one can be that freakin happy and cheerful all the time. Look at them. They all have weird almost plastic expressions on their faces and all sing and move in an almost mechanical way. They apparently haven’t lived yet; which surprises me because they live under the oppression of both a “good” witch and a “wicked” witch. Everything they do is literally dictated by who is present.
There must be something in those lollipops is all I’m saying…
Speaking of lollipops, I think those are shipped straight to Oz… passing through the poppies, of course. I know the poppies are courtesy of the wicked witch, but she did say she would stop at nothing to get her sister’s shoes. At least she is straight forward in her motives and true to her word…how many people do you know like that? I’m just saying, is all…something to ponder…
Since we’re in Oz, just look at the wizard. A true coward and fraud. He hides behind a curtain of deceit and lies, with much flare and dramatics. He overcompensates for what he is significantly lacking. Oh, and he, too, is a pawn in Glenda’s vengeance against the wicked witch. Talk about ruthless: he knows no witch worth anything would ever part with her broom and the only way to get it is to do to her what she threatened to do to Dorothy, yet he sends her on this suicidal mission.
The wizard lords over the people of Oz and also plays on their ignorance. He uses fear tactics to threaten the townspeople into submission and silence.
Dorothy is just a spoiled brat. She spends the whole time looking for shortcuts and trying to get back home when she whined about home the whole beginning of the movie. She was the only girl on the farm besides Auntie Em. Thinking only of herself, she ran away to a psychic looking for what she was missing. Because of her selfishness, she is not present when everyone else went into the storm shelter for safety causing undue worry and stress on her family. She deserves the bump on the head and her encounters with those shady people…
Now the morals in the story are top notch. It is complete genius in addressing so many sensitive topics and dealing with the political landscape of the time with rainbow colors and multilayered illusions. Seeing the people in her life from different perspectives, Dorothy should, and seems to, have a new appreciation for what she has.
Yeah, the grass may be greener over the rainbow, but as Dorothy learned the hard way, happiness is found within. If you go outside yourself looking to be complete, you will die a thousand deaths, be hurt countless times until you realize that which you seek, you already possess. You already have the power to make your dreams come true if you just believe.
I’m not knocking the movie “The Wizard of Oz”, produced by Mervyn LeRey. Like I said, it is genius, with multiple meanings and definitely a movie made well before it’s time.
OneFourZeroPM 