In the following essay I will be discussing the theme of escape and return in The Wizard of Oz, with reference to the quote “there’s no place like home” and the apparent contradiction that exist between the two themes, within the film. I will also express what Salman Rushdie thinks about this apparent contradiction in his review on the Wizard of Oz and will finally express my own view on the subject matter. Throughout the essay I will consider both the narrative and aesthetic qualities of the film.
The Wizard of Oz introduces Dorothea Gale (an orphan) who lives with her aunt and uncle in Kansas. The introduction to ‘the real world’ or that of Dorthea’s home is introduced in black and white film, although Salman Rushdie feels that it is rather multiple tones of grey than black and white, and implies in his review of the film that it represents depression and unhappiness of her life at home (Rushdie,2003: 435).
She decides to run away from home, because her aunt and uncle can’t prevent her beloved dog Toto from being euthanized. She finally decides to return home—from a writers perspective the story itself could end here— but a tornado appears and she can’t reach the storm shelter and takes refuge in her home where she is knocked out by a window. She later wakes up in her house, which is being carried away by a tornado.
To Rushdie, the tornado is but the culmination of the bleak world where Dorothea is from. To him the tornado represents the grey world being sucked up and in turn being unleashed against itself. He sees the role of the whirl-wind as something that rips that world apart (Rushdie, 2003: 435). From an aesthetic point and more specifically from a colour theory point-of-view, I can conceptually deduct that out of destruction of this dark world a new world is born, a world of Technicolor. The colour black when using pigment as the medium, is the accumulation of the pigments of the whole colour-spectrum (rgbworld.com,2010).
All the negative emotions are portrayed through the use of dark and negative colours and as Rushdie suggests that the film-makers have made use of shapes, to express the mood and emotions of the scenes and characters. Through the symbolic use of shapes the film-makers create a direct link between symmetry and being beautiful and good and in contrast the irregular shapes portray unattractiveness and evil.
He also adds that Bad characters are connected with irregular shapes and unsymmetrical forms, for example the wicked witch of the west, which disappears with a puff of smoke (Rushdie, 2003: 436).Whereas basic geometric shapes are associated with Dorothea’s home and safety (Rushdie, 2003: 436). Aesthetically the tornado as an ever changing shape can be seen as something that is deceitful and mysterious. The story depends on this mysterious interference with Dorothea’s normal world, as it is the only thing that opens the possibilities of where the story may lead to next.
Whilst the house is being flung through the air by the tornado, Dorothea looks out of her window and literally witnesses the transformation of the world to that of an unreal or fictional world, she specifically sees the character Miss Almira Gulch transform into the Wicked Witch of The West. This could also be a reference to a film audience, as film often reflects reality, where does one draw the line as to what is real. Her house eventually falls to the ground and she opens the door, as she enters the Land of Oz, the film gradually moves from Monochrome to Technicolor. This immediately contrasts the world where Dorothea is from to the world that she finds herself in now. Her first words in the Land of Oz strengthen the notion that the world she enters is not a world that she is familiar with “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” (Wizard of Oz: 1939).
Dorothea has entered a world different from the one she is from, it expresses the human need to escape unfavourable circumstances and the Land of Oz is the perfect getaway, it can be seen as the opposite of Kansas. The need of escape is attended to by the ruby slippers which create the means to travel between Oz and Kansas at ease.
After accidentally killing the wicked witch of the east, she is praised by the town’s folk as a hero and is granted the wicked witch’s magical slippers. The narrative of her being praised as the town’s hero, contradicts Dorothea’s role in Kansas, where she is not a hero but a mere orphan.
Rushdie interestingly points out that after moving from inside her house out to the Land of Oz, she will not be portrayed in any interior until she reaches the Emerald City. This thus in turn conveys her vulnerability on her quest to get back home, as she is not protected for most of her journey (Rushdie, 2003: 440).
The spiralling start of the yellow brick-road is religiously followed by Dorothea, as this implies that she still reacts out of instinct to shapes that she is familiar with. It can also symbolically suggest that, the start of the spiral is the starting point of a complex journey; it also serves as an inter-textual reference to the tornado. The tornado is unpredictable but moves in the form of a spiral, it may imply that the journey that she is about to embark on is that of unpredictability and mystery. A feeling that the story is not a single story but a story constructed out of multiple stories, is also strengthen by the theme of the tornado and the start of the yellow brick road.
She meets three other characters who will accompany her throughout her journey to the Emerald City, namely: the Scarecrow—who wants a brain, the Tin Man—who wants a heart and the Cowardly Lion—who wants courage, all of which leave the places they are familiar with to journey to a world unknown to them, to find qualities they believe they lack. They will only later find out that the qualities they thought they lacked could not be given to them, as they already had these qualities to begin with.
The Land of Oz, is everything that Kansas is not, from an aesthetic point-of-view the Land of Oz has a multitude of colours whereas Kansas is but only shades of grey. Oz is constructed out of numerous different and/or complex shapes whereas Kansas is constructed only of basic shapes. From the perspective of Narrative, the characters of Oz are more helpful to Dorothea than that of the characters in Kansas. Her Aunt and Uncle did not try and help save Toto from Miss Almira Gulch who has received a sheriffs order to take Toto.
To Salman Rushdie a strong contradiction exists between escape and return. He believes that the Land of Oz is much better than that of Kansas and he does not understand why Dorothea chooses to go back home, as a viewer I agree. But I would argue that Dorothea already decided in Kansas that she wanted to return home and the only contradiction that I can see that exists between escape and return is when the Glinda reveals to her that she could have left Oz at any time that she wished. From the very start of the journey she wanted to go home but thought she couldn’t and was forced to embark on her long journey to the Wizard of Oz, which only ended with empty promises, only to learn that she had the power to go home all along.
This once again narratively ties in with the qualities that Tin Man, Scarecrow and The Cowardly Lion wanted, but found out that they already had the qualities they desired, from the start. Salman Rushdie expresses his frustration at Glinda who reveals that Dorothea could have gone home at any point she wanted, because he thinks this renders the journey pointless. I disagree by saying that it only strengthens the theme that the journey was not about going home but a journey of self-exploration. I believe if it were not for this journey, Dorothea would not have grown.
As a viewer the contradiction exists between escape and return, as the Land of Oz’s visual and narrative use, as it is more pleasing and is more desired than that of the visual and narrative structure of Kansas. In the mind of Dorothea the Land of Oz is too detached from that of what she is familiar with, even though to the viewer the Land of Oz is more desirable than Kansas. Dorothea realizes that Oz is a land of new opportunity and of magic, but she endures until the end to get back home, as it is familiar to her. It is quite apparent that she sees home as a place of familiarity and safety.
I agree with Salman Rushdie who states that the notion that “there’s no place like home” only implies that once we have left our childhood homes we realize that their truly is no other place we can call home. Unless we create our own homes, which will never be the homes that we were raised in. He creates a direct link between Oz and the world we enter when we leave our childhood homes (Rushdie,2003: 447). With this notion in mind we can look at Dorothea’s journey through the Land of Oz as merely a journey of growing up and the Land of Oz could be seen as a representation of the process that needs to be taken to grow up.
Bibliography:
- Rushdi,S. “The Wizard of Oz” in BFI Classics, Volume1, edited by H.Buscombe and R. London: BFI Publishing (2003),433-452.
- © 2010 RGB World, Inc, ” Understanding Color”,.http://www.rgbworld.com/color.php
- The Wizard of Oz directed by Victor Fleming, First released in 1939.
By James Honiball
JamesHoniball©2010
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