Ding Dong the "Witch" is dead?-What an incredibly callous thing to say.

Cafe Society
#1

You’ve got soldiers, munchkins! Use them!

And Glinda “The Good” is exhorting Munchkins to spread the word that the woman is dead? And Dorothy joins in singing? Jesus girl, you don’t even know her!

And again, this “Good” witch puts the shoes on Dorothy’s feet to keep them away from The Wicked Witch of the West? Tells The Wicked Witch she has no power there…and promptly sends this underage girl out of the safe haven to where she can be attacked. On foot.

Diplomacy and strategy are not Glinda’s strong points.

#2

Not if you’re the witch’s husband.

#3

Glinda knows that the ruby slippers will protect Dorothy. And she wants For to grow a pair. This I’d an excellent example of showing tough love.

#4

Glinda knew perfectly well that the ruby slippers could have sent Dorothy home right then and there in Munchkinland. Instead, she sent Dorothy cross-country, where she knew the other wicked witch would pick her up. Stand to reason that if Dorothy could kill one witch, she could kill the other one. And she did.

#5

My wife Pepper Mill addressed this a long time ago in Teemings ("What’s in it for Glinda?):

http://teemings.net/series_1/issue07/glinda.html

#6

Kind of puts to shame my claim that Glinda is not strong on strategy.

#7

Sure it’s callous, but it’s clear the witch had been terrorizing the Munchkins for a long time.

On a possibly-related note, I wonder what the streets of Miami are going to look like when Fidel Castro finally croaks. I’m guessing they’ll be widespread partying.

#8

[FWIW, in the books, Oz is a real place, and not just a dream of Dorothy’s per the movie. I’m going with the books. If Oz is a dream of Dorothy’s, then Glinda has no independent existence or motivation to discuss.]

I feel there are a few holes in Pepper Mill’s version.

  1. If Glinda sees Dorothy as a threat, why doesn’t she just send Dorothy home right away? If that happens, Glinda’s in better shape than she’s been, since Oz is minus the Wicked Witch of the East. And since Dorothy is so clearly clueless, once she’s gone, she’s not coming back again. What Glinda wouldn’t want is for her to stick around and figure out whether she’s got any powers.

  2. “I feel that Glinda knows that the Wizard is a fake and can’t do anything himself about the Wicked Witch. After all, if he could have gotten rid of her, he would have done so soon after he got to Oz.” OK, but if the Wicked Witches of the East and West are sisters and presumably allies against Oz, Glinda, and whoever the fourth witch is, it’s quite possible that if the Wizard were a real Wizard, he might have the power to take on one Wicked Witch but not both at once.

  3. If Glinda believes the Wizard is a fraud, how is he a meaningful rival? She’s got magic; he doesn’t.

  4. Unless she really thinks Dorothy has some extraordinary powers, why does she think sending Dorothy anywhere will accomplish anything but killing off Dorothy? Why not dispose of her kindly by sending her back to Kansas right away?

  5. If she does believe Dorothy has some extraordinary powers, see (1). You don’t want your rival to find out what she’s capable of.

Either way, ISTM that it’s a real long shot that Glinda’s going to come out on top as a result of sending Dorothy to the Emerald City. She’s already ahead in the game because the Witch of the East is dead. Why not send Dorothy home, and see how the new balance of power shapes up?

#9

Everybody knows Glinda assassinated the good witch of the south. :slight_smile:

#10

Wouldn’t have been much of a book* now would it? :smiley:
*Or movie.

#11

I recall a humor show having Glinda state the explanation, “…because I’m a sadistic bitch.”

#12

Hey, she’s a wicked witch. What else do you need to know? Get over it!

#13

Glinda did not know the powers of the shoes at first: “there is some charm connected with them; but what it is we never knew.” (from the books, mind you)

Pepper Mills story has one other huge hole; The fact that Dorothy could well have lost the slippers to the other Wicked witch. in fact that did happen- briefly. RTFirefly makes excellent points.

#14

Movie!Glinda is a creation of Dorothy’s subconscious. She didn’t do anything to Dorothy that Dorothy didn’t want. She couldn’t, because she IS Dorothy.

#15

There isn’t this plothole in the book. There are two good witches. Locasta is the Good Witch of the North. She’s the one who shows up when Dorothy arrives in Oz, gives her the magic slippers, and tells her to go see the Wizard.

Glinda is the Good Witch of the South. She doesn’t appear until the end of the book. After the Wizard flies off in his balloon, Dorothy is advised to go see Glinda. She does and Glinda tells her the slippers have the power to send her back to Kansas.

In later books, it’s shown that Glinda has a vast knowledge about magic. So it’s probable that she knew things about the slippers that Locasta didn’t.

#16

What, does her Big Book of Records not have an index? She can’t find the first entry about someone enchanting a pair of silver slippers?

#17

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a conspiracy:

Pepper Mill missed one thing. In the 1939 movie, the tornado is shown as just a force of nature. But in The Wiz, it’s revealed that Glinda sent the tornado to grab Dorothy.

#18

Good point, no actually it was Locasta who said that, not Glinda. :smack:

#19

I was more trying to call out Baum than you, but I can pretend that for whatever reason Glinda might know and choose not to share the information with her fellow witch.

#20

For those keeping score this is the reason for the discrepancy between Glinda being ‘of the North’ in the 1939 film and her being ‘of the South’ in the 2013 prequel Oz the Great and Powerful. Disney had the rights to the books but not the first film. Dennis Miller used to do a joke about Glinda and the slippers, when she tells Dorothy she had the power to go home all along Dorothy should have freaked out and screamed:

“You bitch! I had the power all along and instead you send me thru this minefield, acid-trip, mind-fuck of a journey?!?”