Friday Films - Wizard of Oz

I didn’t grow up in a time where films were available at our fingertips, and families didn’t spend hundreds on bulky VHS tapes to clutter up their homes. At least mine didn’t, therefore it was a real treat when the Wizard of Oz made its annual appearance on free cable. My mom would start the countdown a week before to build anticipation, and the night of, she would prepare snacks and we would cozy up together on the couch and watch. I remember the opening credits giving me chills. The music, the folkloric excitement once again infiltrating my childhood. Even in the 80’s / 90’s…hell even today we still understand what a cinematic masterpiece the Wizard of Oz was and is in every way, from the premiere of Technicolor to the costumes and stage settings. Baum’s imagination was brought to life!

That chill I still get during the opening credits wasn’t just nostalgia, it's the same thing that makes any piece of folklore stick around for generations. Long before I was capable to understand why the film held onto me, it was already doing the work folklore always does.

As far as Folklore goes, it has never really been about the fantastical elements resting on the surface of each story. The fairies, the witches, demons, tricksters, and even inclement weather…these are things that arrive as omens. It has been a way for people to process and freely talk about the world in which they live. The monster living between the village and forest is just a figure for the famine people are facing or disease that is killing them off one by one. It lets people speak and serves up a dose of fear and precaution on a cushy pillow. Folklore unravels through metaphor, because for many, the honest truth is too difficult to understand and at other times it is forbidden. Once upon a time is just a story, but one that does the job to help the reader make sense of chaos that could not be explained at the time. That's why so much folklore survives long after the specific fear that birthed it has faded: the shape of the story outlives its original context, ready to be filled with whatever new fear or hope a new generation brings to it. The Wizard of Oz might seem very old at this point, but it is very modern folklore that is thought to touch on politics of the west.

That's the interpretation of the story that lives in a lot of thought-pieces out there; populism, the gold standard, a nation working through its anxieties. But folklore doesn’t get to have only one owner of its interpretation. Every generation is allowed to fill the shape with its own fear or hope, and this is where I fill it with mine, and honestly a few others probably see it this way as well.

In a nutshell: You already have everything you need.

You don’t need endless searches, validation, or omnipotent beings. You don’t need leaders, kings, or large groups to tell you where to go and how to think. You don’t need to search far and wide for your people, they have been there all along, and others will come along when needed.

You have everything you need within yourself and with your closest soul circle, and when you start looking outward its easy to become lost. It’s spiritually deep, written in a time when Theosophy was taking off and people were once again trying to awaken (though that turned into a sect in its own rights but I digress.) Since the beginning of time people have been searching for meaning through leaders pretending to be gods, kings, and politicians and the wizard shows us it’s just an illusion. Dorothy had the power to wake up all along, she just had to open her eyes. Her other three pals also had all they needed in them, and the trinkets they were given were mere placebos. Brains, heart, and courage can’t be given.

Hickory: What have you learned Dorothy?

Dorothy: Well, I - I think that it- it wasn’t enough to just want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em - and it's that - if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with! Is that right?

Whatever Dorothy had been chasing across Oz had never left her own figurative backyard to begin with.