"The Wizard of Oz" is really a satire...

So, we’ve had yet another of those claims that THE WIZARD OF OZ is a satire of Populist Politics: Concerning the Wizard of Oz

THE WIZARD OF OZ is actually a satire by Frank L. Baum, debunking the moon landings as a hoax.

It’s obvious if you take a few minutes to think about it.

Dorothy lives in Kansas (a barren flat plain, like the sets they used for the moon) with her Auntie Em, and the word “moon” starts with “Em.” She is taken to Oz by a twister, symbolic of the twisting of reality that the U.S. government imposed on us. She lands in Munchkinland (another “M”, symbolizing the trip to the moon) and remember that Baron Van Munchkinhausen was a famous ficticious legendary character who took a trip to the moon.

Dorothy gets silver slippers from the witch, and the moon is always described as silver. She starts on the path of yellow brick – yellow for the sun, symbolic of Apollo (thus the Apollo mission), the ancient Greek God of the sun – in contrast to silver for the moon. The brick of the road is symbolic of the mud of earth as opposed to the dust of the fake moon.

Her companion is the dog Toto, meaning that the whole moon landing is a hoax “in toto.” Toto travels in a little carrying basket, symbolic of the lunar module.

She meets a scarecrow (crops), a tin man (industry) and a lion (animal life) – none of those things exist on the moon, so this is a symbolic way of saying that they didn’t really fly to the moon. They fall asleep in a poppy field (there are no fields of any kind), and sleep happens from lack of atmosphere. If astronauts had really landed on the moon, they would have fallen unconscious.

They go to Emerald City (an allusion to the old legend that the moon is made of green cheese). The Wizard appears to them as a large, round face – the man in the moon!

Note also the abundance of colors in Oz – red poppies, yellow brick road, blue Munchkinland, green Emerald City. But there are no colors like that on the moon. She melts the Wicked Witch with water, and there is no water on the moon. See again, how Baum uses all these things that don’t exist on the moon to be symbolic of the fact that Dorothy (mankind) never really went to the moon.

The winged monkeys are symbolic of the astronauts, who are just trained monkeys (performers) and minions of the evil powers in the Dark Castle of the Government. Dorothy brings back the witch’s broomstick, like the astronauts brought back moon rocks, and everyone knows that you can’t fly on a broomstick – the moon rocks are no more real than a flying broomstick.

And the final proof: the Wizard’s balloon is labeled “OMAHA.” Replace the OM with the letter that comes between them, N. Remember that THE WIZARD OF OZ was written in 1901, and the sum 1+9+0+1 = 11, so replace the H (from Hollywood) with the 11th letter that follows H, namely S (from “staged”). And OMAHA is decoded to read NASA!

It’s obvious when you look at it. The truth behind the WIZARD OF OZ is that Frank L. Baum believed the moon landing to be a hoax, and symbolized it in his book.

It’s all so clear to me now!

I thought it was a the story of Ozzy Osbourne’s troubled chilhood. How wrong I was :smack:

Bah. Everyone knows the moon is made of paper, anyway.

Purple horseshoes…
C K Dexter Haven you quite understandably missed a very crucial aspect that both explains and expands upon the moon hoax viewpoint. Frank’s quite obvious nom de plume.
Baum is an intentional misspelling of Balm.
Frank L. Balm.
F.L. Balm.
Flat Lander’s Balm

It’s more than just support for the moon hoax. The entire book proves the moon hoax and uses it as a means to further support the fact that the Earth is flat!
Is it any wonder he picked Kansas as his “home”? I mean, I live in Kansas. There ain’t no flatter place than here.

All that, plus it’s the palimpsest (of sorts) of Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon”! :rolleyes:

I thought The Wizard of Oz written around 1900…

Either that, or I have been royally whooshed.

SUPERKARLENE, yes, The Wizard of Oz was written in 1900 and published in 1901.

So what? You gonna let a little think like a century stand in the way of progress?

Nope, it’s a satire of the French Revolution. Or of free silver. Or something.

  • The Wizard of oz* written in 1900? Don’t be so naive. Since the advent of the hoax, all of our so-called “histories” have been written to suit the manufactured version of events and to discredit the truth-seekers.

Of course, it’s L. Frank Baum, not Frank L. Baum. (Mr. Baum didn’t want to use his first name, Lyman.)

Lyman? As in “Lying Man?”

need we say more?

CK Dexter Haven, your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

However, you still have some explaining to do. For instance, some of the most enduring images of each Apollo mission are of the shiny, cylindrical Service Module surmounted by the cone-shaped Command Module with the long pointy bit on top.

If your theory were correct, wouldn’t there be some visual reference to this in the movie version of the Wizard of Oz?

Never mind.


Link fixed – CKDH

Darn it, my first coding error on SDMB. The second link should be “… movie version of the Wizard of Oz”.

Dex, you missed the most obvious clue of all. If you study the still frame of the scene where the munchkin is seen hanging himself in the background, you’ll clearly see that one of the three tramps holding the rope is E. Howard Hunt, who as we all know would never allow a lunar landing because it would expose the secret Illuminati moonbase built with technology which the Majestic 12 group developed by decoding the secret heiroglyphics in the Great Pyramid using a code found in the backwards playing of Tupac Shakur’s unreleased cover version of “Mazurek Dabrowskiego” which he recorded after helping to bury Paul McCartney, who was killed to prevent him from revealing his knowledge of how the Count St Germain was secretly directing the Knights Templar to steal kidneys and sell them to Howard Hughes in order to finance his plans to subliminally broadcast the secret formula for Coca-Cola during the final episode of MASH.

I mean it’s pretty obvious when you think about it.

The problem with satire is that, for it to work fully, it must actually be more nonsensical than the idea it satirizes.

For the Moon Hoax, this is not possible.

I would love to laugh at this obvious over-the-top satire of the people who promote the hoax, but you have not seen what I have; this idea is actually more intelligent than many put forth by the hoax proponents. Even with the fundamental anachronism, you have put together a more logical scenario than Bart Sibrel ever could.

I’ll add that I do have a sense of humor about the hoax; when I give talks about it I use plenty of jokes, even bringing Barbra Streisand into the hoax (the two principle actors in “Capricorn One” were married to her, albeit at different times).

But I read satires like this, and wonder-- seriously– how long before it appears on a hoax-believer’s site as truth.

Sigh. I have the most ridiculous job on Earth. I really do.

A friend of mine once sent me the following deconstruction of OZ

Are you claiming that Ms. Streisand went to Mars? :eek:

I had thought that this was a satire of the “Wizard of Oz is a satire of Populist politics” claims, not of the Moon Hoax.

When D’Ora3 and her posse ride the carriage to the Wizard’s crib, doesn’t it Park On A Parkway? Word, Toto.