Concerning The Wizard of OZ

Cecil’s Column: Is “The Wizard of Oz” a satire … – CK Dexter Haven


I was looking through bored.com and found this site among the other links. I was browsing through when I came across an article that dealt with the Wizard of OZ and the Populist movement. The explanation was good, but to fully understand the film, one must first understand the Populist movement itself.

It all started out in the western plains. After we murdered and herded the Native American tribes that lived there first, there was quite a population explosion out there, thanks to the Homestead Act. The soil, although hard, was extremely fertile from years and years of billions of buffalo doing their buisness all over the place. The farmers were able to produce massive quantities of crops, and this became a large problem.

The excess created a severe depression in the agricultural market. This, combined with the end of a thirteen year cycle of heavy rain and punishing weather screwed the farmers over pretty badly.

The farmers did not consider their line of work subject to oscilations in the buisness cycle, bad luck, or over production. They believed that they were good, honest men that made an honest living, so it could not possibly be their fault. According to the common farmer, the devil causing this mayhem was eastern trust and the industrial capitalism that came with it. They also blamed immigrants for some of their problems.

The farmers began to protest! They claimed that the retail prices in the east were too high, and that the people were not consuming enough. To combat this, they went after the grain elevators and the railroads. To do this, Oliver Hudson Kelly founded the National Grange and Patrons of Husbandry in 1867. The idea was to rally political power to get things done for the farmers. They also pooled resources to buy their own grain elevators and buy all the equipment they needed instead of paying middlemen for their services.

That took care of the big threat of greedy grain elevator operators, and next in line were the railorads. Now, they realised that there was no way to compete with the massive RR companies, so they attempted to have legislation passed in their favor. A court case, Munn v. Illinois decided the matter, and the farmers won. The prize was a maximum rate which the railroads could charge.

The Populists became a political party, and in 1892 they made a bid for the executive office running on the Omaha Platform. Among other ideas it proposed, some of the big ones were a graduated income tax and more money to be placed in circulation. The most important point of this platform was the free and unlimited coinage of silver! James B Weaver ran for the Populists and gained three states, I believe this is the best any third party has ever done.

He loses for three main reasons. First, Gompers, the fearless leader of the American Federation of Labor, was extremely hostile of anything that did not get his workers more money. Why does this matter? It matters because the union is extremely powerful and consists of most of the eastern city population. Second, the immigrants all voted in blocks. The bosses and Tweeds controlled the immigrant vote, and they liked others more than the populists. Third is the African American vote. African Americans voted Republican no matter what in that time period. They remember the Democrats who enslaved them, and they’re not about to vote for them and the Populists had nothing in the Omaha Platform to help them.

In 93, they try again, but lose after Williams Jennings Bryan, the best public speaker of the age, defects to the Democrats. The Democrats also steal the silver standard idea. The Democrats and the Populists both lose, silver is out and gold is now on top for good. This shatters the Populists and pretty much renders them powerless.

Whew, long story! Now for what it means for OZ!!!

Each character represents something in this story, Dorothy represents the innocent farm children from Kansas, Scarecrows the the Kansas farmers, the Tin Man represents the dehumanization of modern labor and eastern labor. The Lion is our friend W. J. Bryan! The monkeys are actually not Native Americans, they are exploited labor. The guards of the witch are the Native Americans. The good western witch sends snow, the snow means rain, and rain always comes from the West in the plains. The wizard is any one of the dud presidents of the late 1800s and early 1900s, he is not really that important when you realise he is just a man behind a curtain! Big buisness ran the country then, most certainly not the president. Bauhm shows us that all that is needed to be a president is to appear to be all things to all people. The movie does not show this, but in the book every character sees the wizard as something different.

Water kills the witch for obvious reasons. She is from the East, remember the whole eastern capitalism thing I mentioned earlier. Water saves crops and would lessen the sting of eastern capitalism. As for OZ itself, it can be two cities. O comes after N and Z comes after Y…NY, it can also mean DC if you want to link it with the wizard himself first. I believe it is NY because New York is the capitalism capitol of the US, contains Wall St.(which was created primarily because of railroads), and has control over the market. Those nifty emerald glasses are simply an allusion to the Chicago World Fair.

First and foremost, the story is childrens literature!!! The characters are definatly drawn on characters in the Populist era. Bauhm shows the American desire for symbols of fulillment and reveals that our real needs lie elsewhere. If you have any little questions feel free to email me. There and many, many little hints in the film. If anyone wants some more interesting information about The Wizard of OZ, you can email me at:

CwazyKono@hotmail.com

Well, its over! My head is full of this useless information and I figured that somebody might want to know this. Peace!

My bad on the witch thing. I boggled it quite badly after looking at some notes. The Witch of the East represented industrial capitalism’s control of labor. The little people were the oppressed laborors. The house dropping on her is a sign of free eastern labor. The wicked witch of the West says “I can cause accidents too!” She does indeed symbolize the bad weather and bad farming weather is defeated by rain.

No.

It’s not true.

We know exactly who made this story up, and he’s admitted that he made it up.

And Baum was a Republican, anyway.

See http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_392.html, and http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/Populism.htm

Maybe it’s just me, but when I read the poem quoted in that article, my impression is that Parker just doesn’t get sarcasm. But then that’s probably just my own sarcastic streak getting the better of me…

Probably – or you just haven’t read enough 19th-century political propaganda. Believe me, there’s no reason to read sarcasm into it. (You may also be unconsciously influenced by the words “gets the chair”; electrocution had been introduced by 1896, but it was very recent [1890], and I doubt very much that the idiom was yet current.)

Trust me on this. I’m a member of the International Wizard of Oz Club , and on the subject of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as “populist allegory”, we’re “long past innocence and fast approaching apathy.”

I have read the books my friend, it is true. Explain the large OMAHA baloon. Explain the silver slippers. Please, do some research with real books in real universities. It is common knowledge among history professors that this stuff is real.

I’m assuming this was meant to be posted in this thread and that you clicked on New Thread instead of Post Reply.


I have merged the two threads. – CK Dexter Haven

JWK, what is the IWOC’s position on the whole Pink Floyd synchronicity thing that has been beaten to death here and elsewhere?

It is not “common knowledge”, because it is false. It is a lie. Someone just made it up. It’s not true. It is in conflict with the facts. It is contrary to reality. It is an urban myth.

This place is supposed to be about fighting ignorance, not spreading it.

That’s not a question about Oz; it’s a question about Pink Floyd. The apparent synchronicity is there; all you have to do is perform the experiment. But whether it’s intentional or not is a question for the members of Pink Floyd to answer; Oz fans are no more qualified than anyone else.

Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, Kwazy, glad to have you with us.

It is helpful to provide a link to Cecil’s Column when you are making some comment on it. Helps everyone stay on the same page, mostly. I have therefore edited a link into your post, right up at the top.

I have also merged the various independent threads, where a new member has clearly hit “Submit New Thread” instead of “Reply”.

And on the Pink Floyd thing, check out: Does the music in Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon coincide with the plot of The Wizard of Oz?

… and finally, you might want to check out: The Wizard of Oz is a satire…

…and I still contend that no treatment of Oz is valid without consideration of the influence of Madame Blavatsky and
her teaching. Baum’s mother-in-law was a student of Theosophy, and he clearly deferred to the women in his life. The fact that all the most powerful characters in his entire Oz series are female makes this clear.

He “deferred to the women in his life” after three or four business failures. And it is simply not true that “all the most powerful characters in his entire Oz series are female”; Tititi-Hoochoo, the Great JinJin, for one, is male; so is King Anko. Furthermore, many of his characters are female because he wrote several of the books with an eye toward making them into musicals.

It is true that Baum dabbled in Theosophy and that its influence is occasionally visible. But he was not a profound thinker, and consciously wrote his children’s stories as entertainment without “deeper significance”.

John . I’m totally in your corner on this whole thing.

Just for your future info, when you say

While the exact idiom may not have been common, and perhaps have even been first used by Baum, there is a cite from 1895 which reads

So the use of “chair” as shorthand wasn’t exactly unknown.

I did have a history professor tell our class that The Wizard of Oz was a satire on the Populist movement. I also had an English professor tell us that the word “squaw” comes from an Indian word for “vagina,” but that’s not true, and I had a psychology professor tell us that there are more people alive today than have ever lived, and that’s not true either.

Just because certain people believe it doesn’t make it true.

I will cite multiple, extremely credible sources tomorrow. You’re arguments do not hold up against such a well documented subject.

It is not impossible that perhaps some of this leaked into Baum’s subconsious. But to think he did it on purpose is to call the man a liar, and also throw out everything we actually know about the man.

Nor is “Lord of the Rings” about WWII. Tolkien made that very clear. Of course, some biographers suspect that both World Wars did have some subconsious effect on Prof Tolkien’s writings, and since he was a well informed Englisman of that time, it would be hard to say otherwise.

But you can do this with just about any book, you know. Find a few interesting coinidences, then extrapolate from there- and be sure to ignore everything that goes against your thesis. You can’t just “pick & choose” with the few things that match, you know, if it is really a satire/hidden message, it pretty well all has to mesh.

When the film/book/whatever is really supposed to BE a “hidden meaning” that message or something doesn’t take any work to decypher. Orson Welle’s movie was really about the Hearst family- it is so very obvious that no one tries to say otherwise. Other than the sled, EVERYTHING is clearly Hearst. Even Welles didn’t argue otherwise.

It’s also ignoring the fact that Littlefield admitted that he made up the supposed “allegory”.

Not to mention that, for a year or two, Baum actually owned a midwestern newspaper, for which he wrote all the editorials (including the notorious “Since we’ve already committed every other possible crime against the Indians, maybe it would be best to finish the job by wiping them out” material). There simply isn’t any indication that he held Populist beliefs.

Another blow against the Populist interpretation: There are a heck of a lot of Oz books, but only one of them even has the apparent symbolism. Admittedly, it’s conceivable that Baum wrote the first one as an allegory, and then when it sold well as a pure fantasy, decided to just make more money from sequels. But it’s much more likely that they’re all intended just as pure fantasies.

Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Littlefield said that he made up the story.

Baum’s goal was to write a piece of children’s literature, and he used the Populist movement as a sort of backdrop to the whole thing. You can tell us facts about him, his political views, his shoe size, and what his favorite color was…but you can not explain the obvious, multiple, well cited instances in the story that seem to refer to the Populist movement! So what if he didn’t agree with the Populists, that does not prove that The Wizard of Oz is not an allegory to their crusade.

BTW… I’m almost positive that Kennedy was Scott McCuskey in a past life, since he likes to “shoot things down”…ha ha ha…he he he…um. Well, I thought it was funny.