Saturday TeaRoom 9/19/09 "Ding Dong" ... and wicked witches?

[Zanaspus]

Flying Monkeys. Too many nightmares to count!

[Geekgirl]

You forgot the Oompa Loompas! oops, wrong movie, I mean Munchkins.

I would have to say the Flying Monkeys, because more than any other theme song - more than Jaws or the Imperial Stormtroopers, CRuella DeVille... I hum that when it's "curtains." Haha!

[Intuit]

It's a movie that is memorable for many reasons. First and foremost: the music. So many memorable songs that it's probably one of the best known musicals of all time. The Library of Congress recognizes The Wizard of Oz as the most widely viewed movie of all time.

Then, we have the tremendous impact of the Technicolor film process, the first full-color movie that transported movie goers into a brilliant fantasy land. It was a public panacea for a low point in American history.

We have the various moral themes that hinted of the many social issues facing America in the 1930s: looming war in Europe, the Depression and 'making do' with what you have at hand. Of finding happiness when living under difficult and 'iffy' and hardscrabble conditions. This period spawned what would become one of the most notable periods of social program development in the history of democracy.

Walt Disney was a moralist; he wanted to provide hope. This movie was his answer to the moral dilemma of to cope with difficult living conditions. Home is where the heart is. There is no place like home (watch what you wish for, or you may find yourself homeless). Finding happiness and contentment in living with what you have at hand takes heart, head, courage and resourcefulness. The importance of family and friends in trying times.

Flim-flammery was rampant in the 30s, when money was tight, food and water shortages affected fully one third of America, and Everyman longed for magical relief from the difficult living conditions of the period (examples, the itinerant rainmaker who collected money in advance for his 'services' to end drought, and the snake-oil medicine vendors who peddled 'relief' from widespread dust-induced respiratory ilnness ).

It was a depressing time. Lack of money. Lack of jobs. Major public health problems (including the emergence of epidemic polio) made worse by inept public administration. Lack of goods because of a flagging economy. Families were driven off the land, creating an army of homeless camps, and men and women that chased work across the land like a sea of locust. It forced penniless families to live with relatives under very stressful conditions. Bleak times.

This was the Dust Bowl Era, a time of droughts that were so extensive, it caused nearly a decade of successive crop failures from central Texas to the plains of central Canada, catalyzing collapse of local agricultural markets. The combination of record heat, unusual climate conditions and convective winds lofted parched soils thousands of feet into the air, and carried fine particled soils from the inland Western drylands to the Eastern Seaboard (at times, dust was transported as far as eastern Europe).

It started with the onset of the Depression but made much worse by the record heat waves and water shortages coupled with soil erosion resulting from land grabbing and clueless farming practices of the early 20th century, on comparative scale in more recent times with China and Australia.

To really appreciate this movie, you have to think about the plight that many Americans faced and why it met need with satisfying result.

No name Wulong in my cup. This was a great poll question, Chip.

[brlarson]

[ ... interesting commentary deleted ... ]

So, who did you vote for? (I'm amazed that the beasts are ahead in the polls!)

[Intuit]

Didn't vote. Seeing the topic spun my thought back to two years ago, when I was working on climate/dust-related project and had many spent months digging through various online and U library historical archives. As in the case of other recent longterm and catastrophic regional droughts, the root causes are natural climate fluctuation, reinforced and considerably lengthened/worsened by human activity.

The Wizard of Oz appeared at about the same time as Steinbeck book and John Fords (also legendary movie), The Grapes of Wrath.

[Geekgirl]

Walt Disney was a moralist; he wanted to provide hope. This movie was his answer to the moral dilemma of to cope with difficult living conditions.

Umm...

[Geekgirl]

I had every intention of continuing my cleaning/organizing project I started on Thursday. (Note the tiny robot, and broken porcelain moose on the tea table.)
First though, I had to have some tea.
Then, because I was having tea, I decided I wanted some breakfast.
After I got the breakfast prepared, it seemed like a good idea to take a picture.
Taking the picture reminded me that I am behind on my RIP IV reading challenge, so I went to get my book.
When I found the book, I also discovered 2 CDs I bought at the 2nd hand shop that weren't on my computer.
So I went to the computer, which is next to the tea shelves I'm organizing, so I sat down to dust some teaware.
Which made me think I might need to have some tea...

[Intuit]

Yes, sorry, it was indeed Sam Goldwyn who had first purchased the rights to the book. In the mid-30s, Disney was looking for a movie follow-up to Snow White, had purchased rights to the 3-strip technicolor process, and as a long-time fan of Frank Baums books, wanted to make an animated version of the Wizard at about the same time that Goldwyn contracted for production rights.

Frank Baums book predated the Depression by several decades, but it's themes were familiar to Frank and to a later generation of Americans: he was bankrupted and left penniless in the previous economic depression of 1893.

http://jimhillmedia.com/blogs/jim_hill/ ... /6565.aspx

[chamekke]

I don't suppose there are any pirates in Oz, are there?

Avast! I completely forgot that today is Talk Like a Pirate Day!

The real tragedy is that I was actually going to try and slip a little pirate talk into my tea class. "Yaaaar, otemae chodai itashimasu, me 'earties!" (or something along those lines, delivered in the ripest of Robert Newton tones).

Well, lads and wenches, at least there's some o' the day left to indulge... if ye dare, ye tea-swiggin' bilge rats!

[brandon]

Intuit has some interesting things to say about the themes of the movie reflecting the events of the 1930s. However, there is a strong case that Baum's book (published in 1900 and made into a musical for the first time in 1901) is an allegory for the populist politics of the 1890s. During this time there was an economic downturn - the panic of 1893, and issues between new industrialists and labor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_ ... zard_of_Oz

Some characters are disputed, but the major themes and political players are fairly overt.

Having seen the movie a few times (but not read the full book), the characters in the film seem to still play with their Gilded Age subjects. Perhaps the level of detail being necessarily reduced for the film, the characters could play just as well for the downturn of the 1930s.

Any ideas on overt changes made to "update" the allegory?

This is an extremely interesting disenting opinion. Ignore the URL, its pretty safe. http://www.sexualfables.com/OzisChina.php

[LindenIsland]

Mmmm, tea update: an authentic Irish black my mum got for me, with a teensy bit of milk and sugar.

Glorious~

[murrius]

Flying monkey's all the way! Who can't love an evil flying monkey? An interesting bit of trivia; evil flying monkeys actually come from Toronto. I bet you didn't know that......

Long Jing and Chai tea so far today. Tonight I'm thinking either Keemun or Scotch.

[Drax]

I don't suppose there are any pirates in Oz, are there?

Believe it or not... Ruth Plumbly Thompson, who wrote on the Oz series after Baum's passing, wrote a book called Pirates in Oz...!

I be havin' a cuppo tea ta drink ta the health of 'em both! Yarr!!

[Salsero]

Wow, between Intuit and Brandon we may have to change TeaChat to a film studies forum instead of tea forum!

I always thought of the film as a black and white movie because that was how I saw it, when once a year as a special holiday treat we got to stay up late to watch with our parents. In fact, apparently the movie's success is actually due more to its television history starting in 1959, a period of time that was the polar opposite of the terrible depressions of the 1890's and 1930's.

The Kansas characters always seemed a little old fashioned to me as a kid, but very real, reminiscent of my parents' rural roots, my grandparents, and visits to the family's rural antecedents. Given that, perhaps my parents' generation viewed Kansas with nostalgia as a simpler time of homespun goodness and, in turn, recognized in Oz that post war, urban economy in which they thrived, a colorful land* that was tempting but nevertheless replete with hazards.

... or not. Are we doing Mad Men tomorrow?




*The movie switches from black and white to color when Dorothy arrives in Oz, a fact we could not appreciate on a black and white TV.

[Intuit]

Brandon: Sam Goldwyn's screenplay was somewhat different than the book, notably, the central characters: Miss Gulch (court orders/reposession), Professor Marvel (fortune teller/scam man), and the farmhands (along with the black/white bleak landscape depict difficult farm life), none of which appear in the book. Oz is a real place in the books; Goldwyn needed an allegorical figure to represent the heartless landowners (wealthy bankers and townsmen) who turned families out and raized homes (tornado).

Sam knew that a uplifting themed movie, employing color to underscore the dream world of Oz, and carrying the positive take home messages from the fairytale setting back into the black and white ending would resonate with audiences.

On dissenting opinion on intent/meaning: of course, there are many interpretations of underlying meaning within this movie, including assertions of gay themes.

I think news editors and film makers of these difficult economic times knew that the general public had only so much tolerance for additional negativity. And the musical genre of entertainment is generally meant to be uplifting, playing best when times are tough because people sing to relieve stress.