Lengthy earlier than Depraved reimagined the Witch of the West as a dissident resisting fascism, Oz was a hotbed of political commentary. No, I am not referring to that doubtful outdated story that L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as an allegory in regards to the evils of the gold normal. As Michael Patrick Hearn pointed out way back, the creator of Oz as soon as printed a poem endorsing the gold-backed greenback—”We are going to achieve the world’s respect/When it is aware of our coin’s ‘appropriate’/And McKinley’s within the chair!”—which makes it unlikely that he’d produce a Populist parable. And whereas that leaves open the chance, championed by the historian Quentin P. Taylor, that Baum was approaching the difficulty from a extra gold-friendly angle, I do not wish to get misplaced simply but within the weeds of alleged symbolism. There’s loads of overt commentary in Baum’s world to chew on earlier than we begin attempting to decode issues.
For instance: In 1902, two years after The Great Wizard of Oz appeared, Baum and a few collaborators loosely tailored it right into a musical full of topical jokes. At one level within the play, the Wizard gives the Scarecrow the mind of Republican powerbroker Mark Hanna; at one other, the Scarecrow cracks that he is likely to be associated to Secretary of State John Hay. One character is an anarchist irritated that his bargain-sale bombs do not work.
Two years after that, Baum wrote a second Oz novel, The Marvelous Land of Oz, that spoofs the suffragette motion: When an all-girl “Military of Revolt” seizes the Emerald Metropolis, its members appear mainly taken with issues like buying jewels and robes—and when they’re in the end defeated, they’re glad that they now not need to eat their husbands’ cooking. Baum gave the story a feminist ending, although: As soon as the rightful political order has reestablished itself, Oz’s strongest figures are two benevolent ladies, making the place a form of matriarchy.
By the sixth e-book within the sequence, The Emerald City of Oz (1910), Baum was presenting the fairyland as a socialist utopia:
There have been no poor folks within the Land of Oz, as a result of there was no such factor as cash, and all property of each kind belonged to the Ruler. The folks had been her kids, and he or she cared for them. Every particular person was given freely by his neighbors no matter he required for his use, which is as a lot as anybody might fairly need. Some tilled the lands and raised nice crops of grain, which was divided equally among the many total inhabitants, so that every one had sufficient….If by probability the availability ever ran brief, extra was taken from the nice storehouses of the Ruler, which had been afterward crammed up once more when there was extra of any article than the folks wanted.
Each one labored half the time and performed half the time, and the folks loved the work as a lot as they did the play, as a result of it’s good to be occupied and to have one thing to do. There have been no merciless overseers set to observe them, and nobody to rebuke them or to seek out fault with them. So every one was proud to do all he might for his associates and neighbors, and was glad after they would settle for the issues he produced.
“I don’t suppose such an association can be sensible with us,” Baum added, “however Dorothy assures me that it really works finely with the Oz folks.”
One other Baum e-book, The Sea Fairies (1911)—not formally an Oz novel, however the protagonists would later cross over to the Oz sequence—features a scene the place an octopus is offended that anybody would suppose he resembles Commonplace Oil. “Simply because we have now a number of lengthy arms and take no matter we will attain,” he says, “they accuse us of being like— like— oh, I can not say it! It’s too shameful, too humiliating.”
Baum died in 1919, however his creation saved rising: Everybody from David Lynch to Robert Heinlein to the Muppets has issued Oz sequels, prequels, riffs, reimaginings, parodies, and diversifications, and these too have typically taken on political shadings. When The Wiz reworked The Great Wizard of Oz into an all-black musical, as an illustration, it was 1975, proper within the aftermath of the Sixties liberation actions; songs like “Everybody Rejoice” and “Y’all Got It” gave the present a theme of now that we have now our freedom, we have to care for ourselves. (Or not less than it gave the play that theme. The Wiz movie went in a special course.) After which there’s Gregory Maguire’s darkish 1995 novel Wicked, which is explicitly in regards to the methods governments use social scapegoating to broaden their energy. When Depraved grew to become a Broadway musical eight years later, the story grew to become extra kid-friendly nevertheless it did not lose its antiauthoritarian theme. It even sprinkled in a number of new political references, as when one witch describes one other witch’s demise as “regime change.”
And that is simply the politics that writers supposed to place into their Oz tales. Audiences are continually adapting texts for their very own ends, and tales can tackle meanings that the authors by no means supposed. (In the event you actually, actually wish to learn The Great Wizard of Oz as an assault on the gold normal, nothing’s stopping you.) The Marvelous Land of Oz has a plot twist the place we be taught that the story’s boy hero was really born a woman however was gender-swapped in infancy by a merciless witch; in the long run, the character then turns into a woman once more, and he or she fortunately stays one for the remainder of the sequence. It is secure to say that L. Frank Baum, writing in 1904, was not attempting to make an announcement about trans rights, however for years the story has been understandably widespread with trans folks.
After all, that ending is also solid as a detransition narrative—and inevitably, you possibly can find folks online who learn it that method.
An analogous pair of competing readings has began to bedevil Depraved: Half 1, the hit film primarily based on the primary half of the Depraved stage play. The movie is clearly in regards to the evils of authoritarian rule. However completely different audiences have been treating it as an both anti-Trump or pro-Trump fable, relying on who precisely they see as an authoritarian menace.
The anti-Trump readings are simpler to seek out. For Constance Grady at Vox, “the Wizard suggests…Trump: a pacesetter consolidating his energy by scapegoating marginalized teams and slowly however absolutely denying them their rights.” For Salamishah Tillet of The New York Instances, one character’s obvious resolution to aspect with the Wizard “holds echoes [sic] of our latest presidential election.” Numerous different writers have taken related approaches to the film, and the movie’s personal director has embraced this interpretation.
But liberals don’t “personal the imagery of subversion and outsiderness,” as one liberal pundit—Thomas Frank—as soon as put it. Provided that Depraved presents Elphaba, the so-called Depraved Witch of the West, as a misunderstood hero maligned by media propaganda, a MAGA Depraved riff virtually writes itself:
Born to the institution however despised by it, Elphaba arrives at an elite college the place kids of privilege discuss wanting to assist the downtrodden—however this seems simply to be a masks for serving to themselves. (In a single wry second, a personality talks a giant recreation about providing her solidarity to the oppressed however all she really does is change a reputation.) Worse but: When she travels to the Emerald Metropolis, Elphaba discovers that Oz’s authorities is a rotten establishment constructed on lies. The dictatorial Wizard methods her into creating a military of flying spies—an aerial surveillance state—to hunt for what the Wizard calls “seditious” actions. However Elphaba defies the deep state, and…
…properly, you possibly can fill in the remainder. (Did I point out that in Maguire’s novel, characters periodically accuse Elphaba of trafficking in conspiracy theories?) Up to now, the pro-Trump spin on Depraved has proven up totally on social media, however Steve Krakauer has presented it at op-ed size in The Hill and I will not be shocked the concept turns up elsewhere too.
Look: I do not see Trump as an Elphaba determine, however somebody with a much less important tackle the person might actually undertaking him onto that position. And if that particular person additionally sees a sure resemblance between the Wizard’s regime and a few of the establishments that many #Resistance varieties have felt the necessity to defend…properly, I am unable to say I disagree about that half.
However in case you do disagree, that is high quality. Oz has been within the public area since 1956. It belongs to all of us, to learn, misinterpret, or rewrite any method we please.
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