"Your home is superior to the outside world" theme in older movies...

In a weird sort of way, the dystopian reaction to Wizard of Oz, Zardoz, says much the same as Wizard, well, with a loincloth clad, sword wielding Sean Connery in the Dorothy Gale role, of course.

The theme’s not limited to movies, either.

At the end of Robert Heinlein’s Tramp Royale (written in the late 1940s but not released until some 50 years later) he describes his around-the-world trip and ends up in the last chapter suggesting that the reader just stay in the USA, where you can see things as good or better. A surprisingly parochial attitude, especially from a globe trotter who’s just described the sights in the World Outside.

But that’s not the same as staying home or longing for home. Quite the opposite, actually.

Oh, I dunno- Dorothy Gale and Lightning McQueen both ended up abandoning their dreams of something greater and embraced small town life. Hollywood loves telling people how much better country life is than Hollywood life.

Of course, Victor Fleming, Judy Garland and John Lasseter still elect to live in LA rather than in Bugtussle, Arkansas themselves.

Dorothy Gale in the Oz books didn’t stay in Kansas, either. Not that I blame her – L. Frank Baum made it sound really depressing. In the sequels she goes off to Australia and California besides Oz, and she and her family eventuially move to Oz.

L. Frank Baum himself didn’t stay in the Midwest, but moved to Hollywood, too.

I’ve never read any of the books- I was proceeding from the 1939 movie, which is all I know and is what the OP was discussing.

Hollywood loves to sing the praises of the simple life, even though nobody in Hollywood has any intention of living the simple life himself.