I delurk to share this tale: A woman came in to work today wearing ruby-coloured shoes. This started an Oz discussion and reminded me of my theory regarding Glinda in the film ‘The Wizard of Oz’. This is within the movie only, and wouldn’t apply to the books.
The Recap: Before Dorothy arrives in Oz, there are Wicked Witches of the East and West, Glinda, presumably of the North or South, and with another good Witch in the remaining cardinal direction, as well as the Wizard in the Emerald City. Dorothy arrives, and squashes the WWE. Glinda turns up and puts the ruby slippers on Dorothy. At this point, dorothy could go home. . Instead, Glinda puts her on the road to Oz, ultimately resulting in the demise of the WWW and the departure of the Wizard. Then Glinda tells Dorothy how to use the slippers and go home.
The theory: Glinda shows up to see what killed the WWE, sees Dorothy as an unknown factor. She’s going to send her packing with the slippers , but decides to see what trouble she can cause instead. When she sends Dorothy off to see the Wizard and the WWW (with secret magical backup), its as a stalking horse for her own imperial ambitions, in hopes that she’ll cause more trouble for other magic-users, and maybe cause more fatal “accidents”, or open up some opportunity for a coup. This succeeds beyond her expectations. Its only after the wizard leaves withOUT Dorothy that she decides to intervene again, because Dorothy has eliminated 3/5th of the major players in Oz, and is clearly a threat. So Glinda tells her the secret of the shoes and gets rid of her.
Next stop:
Snuff the other good witch, and the sequel will be: “Glinda, Magical Dictatrix of Oz” :eek:
Clearly you haven’t seen Wicked. There’s a conspiracy theory, but Glinda (er, Ga-linda) would’ve been too dumb to orchestrate one herself. There are greater powers at work here and so forth.
As mentioned in the OP, this interpretation would only apply to the film, which plays fast and loose with the Oz books (e.g. in the movie, the scarecrow gets diploma, instead of the books brans and pins - so that he’ll be sharp). The Baum books create an entire world, complete to politics, and missing royal family, while the book and the play “Wicked” draw on both, but they’re non-canonical to the Baum books, as is the film.
I loved the Return To Oz film. It made the sinister undertones of the 1940 (?) film obvious. There were some great characters in it too and some gnarly period effects.
Of course, in the movie, the whole Oz trip is just a dream. I don’t think that’s true of the book. This means that Glinda is really only a figment of Dorothy’s imagination. She and all her possible schemes go poof when the girl awakes.
Unless maybe Oz is real, and Dorothy is an insane inhabitant of this world who sometimes dreams of an imaginary land called Kansas.
It’s fairly obvious in the movie that Glinda actually killed the Witch of the East herself by magically dropping Dorothy’s house on her. Seriously, how could a twister have carried the house to that precise spot, without doing the slightest damage to the surrounding Munchkin houses and lollipop trees or whatever? And Glinda just happened to be drifting by at that exact moment? Unlikely. It was clearly a whack job.
It has to be said, Glinda doesn’t impress as being the most crafty sorceress in existence-- she’s not merely a ‘bubble-headed blonde,’ she actually travels around in a literal bubble– so we may hypothesize that this was the serendipitous result of a spell gone wrong, Aunt Clara-style. She was probably trying to conjure a ‘hose’ with which to ‘douse’ the Witch, got confused, and mistakenly conjured a ‘house’ instead.
The fact that Glinda didn’t let Dorothy know about the Ruby Slippers’ power isn’t too surprising either. Even knowing that the shoes were magic, there’d be no reason for her to memorize the relatively obscure fact that they possessed the ability to transport a person out of Oz permanently. Why would any Ozite ever use such a power? No doubt after Glinda sent Dorothy on her way, she wafted back to her witch headquarters and looked up more information about the shoes. Then when she got the chance later, she could mention it all smugly as if she had known it all along.
Of course, since the movie establishes that Oz and all its inhabitants are merely the result of a fever dream, Glinda’s actions really represent Dorothy’s deeply held belief that traveling to exotic lands, meeting new friends, and helping others are ultimately a complete waste of time. Indeed, this exact same belief is still held by many residents of Kansas today.
That’s the cool thing about magic. You can get your patsy back to Kansas and have her (and everyone around her) believe it was all a dream. Dorothy was obviously a tool of the Most Benevolent Leader. Hail Glenda!
