Water and the Wicked Witch of the West

[Czarcasm]

@Wheelz

This discussion of Baum and Theosophy, to which I have absolutely nothing to add, is quite fascinating.

But I’m going to interject with a much more mundane (perhaps nitpicky) question about the column. Dex references “Margaret Hamilton, who played both Wicked Witches…”

As I recall, we never saw anything of the Witch of the East other than her legs sticking out from under Dorothy’s house. And ideed, Hamilton is credited on IMDb as “Miss Gulch / The Wicked Witch of the West” with no mention of the WWotE.

So, are there any scenes with a living East Witch, or is this an error and she was actually played by a set of prop legs?

When Dorothy was in the flying house and looking out the window, she saw the Wicked Witch of the East flying by.

[Wheelz]

Just watched the clip; she sees Miss Gulch on her bicycle, who transforms into a witch on a broom. It never occured to me that that’s the Witch of the East. She appears to be dressed in lighter colors than Westy, so that’s a clue, but I don’t know if it’s 100% clear which witch we’re watching.

I guess if Margaret Hamilton said so, I believe her.

[Czarcasm]

@Wheelz

Just watched the clip; she sees Miss Gulch on her bicycle, who transforms into a witch on a broom. It never occured to me that that’s the Witch of the East. She appears to be dressed in lighter colors than Westy, so that’s a clue, but I don’t know if it’s 100% clear which witch we’re watching.

I guess if Margaret Hamilton said so, I believe her.

Can you see the shoes in that clip?

[Wheelz]

Not clearly on my iPhone, but I do suppose that would clinch it.

[Inner_Stickler]

Here’s the relevant clip.They look a little dowdy to be the sparkly shoes but it’s not very clear.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Here’s the relevant paragraph from my notes about the Theosophy connection to the Master Key from Loncraine’s book.

The Master Key was also clearly influenced by Theosophy. The title echoed Madame Blavatsky’s magnum opus, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. Other Theosophical writers drew on the electromagnetic field to describe the “ethereal” planes in which Spirits dwelled. There “are great etheric currents constantly sweeping over the surface of the earth from pole to pole,” wrote Charles Leadbeater in The Astral Plane, a Theosophical manual given to the Baums by Matilda Gage. For Baum, electricity wasn’t simply a scientific force; it had magical, spiritual, and moral dimensions.

Rob, Baum’s real-life son, was an early radio and electricity nerd, the type who today who be a hacker. He had their house wired for bells and sensors all over and had the huge and leaky batteries of his day filling up his bedroom. Baum wrote the book because he was always tripping over wires. It was intended to be a boy’s adventure book to counterpart Oz, but it fell flat. It’s not very good but it gives a great picture of what people in 1903 thought were cool gadgets.

[Ethilrist]

@Czarcasm

Can you see the shoes in that clip?

No, she was an avid cyclist so she didn’t use toe clips.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

@Czarcasm

When Dorothy was in the flying house and looking out the window, she saw the Wicked Witch of the East flying by.

My assumption has always been that was the WWotE, on several counts:
(1) It makes sense, that’s the witch the house lands on, flying about around it;
(2) She’s black-and-white rather than color, but certainly seems to be wearing a less dark outfit than the WWotW;
(3) The WWotW doesn’t appear on scene until much later, when she comes in a burst of fire (rather than just landing her broomstick) – if she had been hovering around the falling house, she would have been on the scene sooner.

[Irishman]

@Wheelz

Just watched the clip; she sees Miss Gulch on her bicycle, who transforms into a witch on a broom. It never occured to me that that’s the Witch of the East. She appears to be dressed in lighter colors than Westy, so that’s a clue, but I don’t know if it’s 100% clear which witch we’re watching.

Dex has answered what I was going to say.

1. Elmira turns into a witch, flying around the house. The house crashes. It makes sense it crashes on the witch that was flying around it.

2. The WWotW doesn’t appear until later, in a puff of smoke. Why did it take so long for her to arrive, if she had been flying around in the storm, and why didn’t she arrive on her broom?

I have always assumed it was the WWofE that was flying around in the storm. “Here’s a witch. Boom Here’s a dead witch. Same witch.”

The clip isn’t clear about the footwear, but it is in the black and white segment, so the shoe color wouldn’t be very evident anyway. Besides, Dorothy didn’t know about the ruby slippers yet, so why would she imagine a witch with ruby slippers?

[Horatio_Hellpop]

I never read the first book. I saw The movie, and an ill-considered “sequel” in the 80s, Return to Oz (which has several story elements from Ozma of Oz and none from Land of Oz). Despite the latter movie’s lack of particular pedigree, it had a scene where the Nome King died from eating a chicken egg (IIRC, he was just threatened with an egg in the book, since eggs are lethal to all nomes). The implied pattern is that things that are healthy and normal for good people (water, eggs) are harmful for the wicked.

[WhyNot]

@Fenris

2. Flaw in the OP’s argument. The Witch of the East was emphatically not killed by the tornado (air), she was killed by the house falling on her (wood and gravity and earth.–It’s no more air than saying a sword that’s pounded between hammer and anvil is shaped by air because the hammer has to go through the air. ).

I disagree. Without the air (tornado) there would have been no flying (and crashing) house. It’s exactly the sort of death one would expect if one could invoke Air spirits to kill someone on the physical plane. When we learn about the Elements, air has a particular problem - you can’t see it. You can only see its affects on other things (and there are some spiritual/philosophical teachings that stem from that realization: Air<=>Intellect; you can’t see an idea, it’s only visible and useful once you use the powers of the other Elements to bring your idea to solid manifestation…but I digress). So to represent Air, we light incense to give us smoke so we can visualize the air - but what we’re seeing on the material plane is the smoke particles (earth) being moved by the air.

A sword pounded into being is being shaped by the hammer, not moved by the air. The house was being moved by the air/Air.

ETA: Unless you think a knife is responsible for a stabbing, I suppose. But I blame the person moving the knife into another person’s body for the stabbing. The knife is simply being moved by the stabber.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

Thanks for the links, Ulfreida. Still, I’m on vacation, and I don’t intend to do any looking into this until I’m home. Choice between playing with my two-anna-half year old granddaughter, or looking into theosophy… ::: Shrug ::: I don’t even need to think about it.

Anyhow, I will try to look into it end of next week.

[Fenris]

@C_K_Dexter_Haven

My assumption has always been that was the WWotE, on several counts:
(1) It makes sense, that’s the witch the house lands on, flying about around it;
(2) She’s black-and-white rather than color, but certainly seems to be wearing a less dark outfit than the WWotW;
(3) The WWotW doesn’t appear on scene until much later, when she comes in a burst of fire (rather than just landing her broomstick) – if she had been hovering around the falling house, she would have been on the scene sooner.

You guys are complicating things too much.

On camera, Dorothy and the Munchkins make it 100% clear that it’s the WWotE.

In Ding-Dong, The Witch is Dead, Dorothy and the Munchkins sing as follows:

*The wind began to switch - the house to pitch and suddenly
the hinges started to unhitch.
Just then the Witch - to satisfy an itch went flying
on her broomstick, thumbing for a hitch.

And oh, what happened then was rich.

The house began to pitch. The kitchen took a slitch.
It landed on the Wicked Witch
in the middle of a ditch,
Which was not a healthy situation for the Wicked Witch.
Who began to twitch and was reduced to just a stitch
of what was once the Wicked Witch.*

[John_W.Kennedy]

@Krokodil

I saw The movie, and an ill-considered “sequel” in the 80s, Return to Oz (which has several story elements from Ozma of Oz and none from Land of Oz).

On the contrary, it has a great deal from The Marvelous Land of Oz—Jack Pumpkinhead, the Gump, a character that is as much Mombi as Langwidere. It’s a pretty thorough mash-up, which I have always supposed to have been done as a way to get to the end of the third book with the situation intact to begin filming further sequels, but without introducing the potentially dangerous General Jinjur plot (and, perhaps, the sex change). Note that the Shirley Temple version also eliminated Jinjur. (The film would probably have done much better if it had not suffered from left-over-from-the-last-administration-itis.)

[BigT]

@Irishman

The clip isn’t clear about the footwear, but it is in the black and white segment, so the shoe color wouldn’t be very evident anyway. Besides, Dorothy didn’t know about the ruby slippers yet, so why would she imagine a witch with ruby slippers?

If you’re going that route, then why would she have imagined them at all?

Am I alone in always assuming that Oz was a real place?

[Czarcasm]

@BigT

If you’re going that route, then why would she have imagined them at all?

Am I alone in always assuming that Oz was a real place?

Oz was in color.
Kansas was in black and white.
I know which one I thought was real.

[John_W.Kennedy]

@BigT

If you’re going that route, then why would she have imagined them at all?

Am I alone in always assuming that Oz was a real place?

In the books, there is no question of it. The producers of the movie, unfortunately, seem to have mixed up The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

[qazwart]

@C_K_Dexter_Haven

My assumption has always been that was the WWotE, on several counts:
(1) It makes sense, that’s the witch the house lands on, flying about around it;
(2) She’s black-and-white rather than color, but certainly seems to be wearing a less dark outfit than the WWotW;
(3) The WWotW doesn’t appear on scene until much later, when she comes in a burst of fire (rather than just landing her broomstick) – if she had been hovering around the falling house, she would have been on the scene sooner.

Maybe this might help: The lyrics from the song Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead

(Dorothy)
It really was no miracle
What happened was just this:

The wind began to switch the house to pitch
And suddenly the hinges started to unhitch
Just then the witch, to satisfy and itch
Went flying on her broomstick thumbling for a hitch

(Munchkin Man)
And oh what heppened then was rich

(Munchkins)
The house began to pitch, the kitchen took a slitch
It landed on the wicked witch in the middle of a ditch
Which was not a healty situation for the wicked witch!
The house began to pitch, the kitchen took a slitch
It landed on the wicked witch in the middle of a ditch
Which was not a healthy situation for the wicked witch
Who began to twitch, and was reduced to just a stitch
Of what was once the wicked witch!

According to the song, the WWotW was flying around the house in the tornado when the house landed on her.

[wevets]

How do you get that from the song, qazwart? I don’t see it.

And Fenris takes exactly the same lines to mean it was the East witch earlier in the thread.

[qazwart]

A lot of people find all sorts of things in the Wizard of Oz.

I remember reading a long time ago that the Wizard of Oz was a populist allegory. The road of yellow gold bricks being walked over by silver slippers somehow symbolized the Free Silver movement. (And “oz” is short for ounces which is how gold is weighed!) The Wicked Witch symbolized the Corporate East who terrorized the little people, and who could only be defeated by the pure values of the Midwest represented by Kansas native Dorothy.

Another story is that the layout of Oz was similar to the layout of the colors in a book on curtains that Baum had when he was a traveling salesman in Chicago. Another source claims that Peekskill on the Hudson, where Baum grew up had a road paved with yellow bricks from Holland.

Baum also once claimed that the name “Oz” came from the label on the front of filing draw in an office he worked at (O - Z).

Baum’s work is filled with all sorts of magical creatures and strange places. If you believe Oz is an allegory, it’s easy to see in it almost anything you wish. There just isn’t any evidence that Baum meant for Oz to be anything more than a fairytale.