The Wizard

[bluethread]

With the travesty of the Disnefication and Burtonification of literary parody, we seem to have lost the art of social parody. If you know of any in the last 50 years please let me know. It appears to me that the social climate of 100 years ago is repeating itself. So, if Baum was writing the Wizard of OZ today, what do you think the various characters and events would represent, or how would the story be changed to fit the current social climate?

[Talishi]

With the travesty of the Disnefication and Burtonification of literary parody, we seem to have lost the art of social parody. If you know of any in the last 50 years please let me know. It appears to me that the social climate of 100 years ago is repeating itself. So, if Baum was writing the Wizard of OZ today, what do you think the various characters and events would represent, or how would the story be changed to fit the current social climate?

Gregory Maguire seems to have taken up the challenge and wrote four novels set in the Oz world, but with a kind of post-modern, edgy aesthetic. The Broadway play "Wicked" is almost a parody of the first novel.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

With the travesty of the Disnefication and Burtonification of literary parody, we seem to have lost the art of social parody. If you know of any in the last 50 years please let me know. It appears to me that the social climate of 100 years ago is repeating itself. So, if Baum was writing the Wizard of OZ today, what do you think the various characters and events would represent, or how would the story be changed to fit the current social climate?

The central message of the story was that the "all powerful Being" behind the curtain that everyone in Oz believed in so earnestly was in reality total humbug and fiction. And since that message is still just as true today as it was 100 ago, why should that message change?

Note: We don't use the term humbug much anymore these days. We use a more colorful term that describes male bovine fecal matter. But the idea is exactly the same.

[ttruscott]

With the travesty of the Disnefication and Burtonification of literary parody, we seem to have lost the art of social parody. If you know of any in the last 50 years please let me know. It appears to me that the social climate of 100 years ago is repeating itself. So, if Baum was writing the Wizard of OZ today, what do you think the various characters and events would represent, or how would the story be changed to fit the current social climate?

Hard to say, the whole story was so anti-Christ I can't compute...

everyone had to learn they were already capable and not lacking in anything (no sin at all); the wizard (GOD) was a fake; Dorothy, (everyman) kills the witch of the East (Satan) by accident and the witch of the West in anger without GOD's grace... Magic gets her home, not righteousness or faith.