The Wizard of Oz as American Myth: A Critical Study of Six Versions of the Story 1900-2007
2013; Mythopoeic Society; Volume: 32; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0146-9339
Autores Tópico(s)Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
ResumoTHE WIZARD OF OZ AS AMERICAN MYTH: A CRITICAL STUDY OF SIX VERSIONS OF THE STORY, 1900-2007. Alissa Burger. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. 230 p. $35.00. ISBN 9780786466436. This past July, The Syfy channel announced that director Timur Bekmambetov was developing the mini-series The Warriors of for the cable network, creating a post-apocalyptic reimagining of L. Frank Baum's classic The Wonderful Wizard of (Andreeva). In February, Warner Horizon announced that it was developing Red Brick Road, a televised fantasy series billed as Game of Thrones meets Wizard of Oz (Kits). In between the announcements for these two re-envisionings of Baum's world as the milieu for action television (whether high fantasy or post-apocalyptic landscape), filmgoers saw Disney's the Great and Powerful (2013; dir. Sam Raimi), a prequel to Baum's novel (and, in many ways, the 1939 classic film), succeed as a blockbuster (as of this writing, the film had grossed $491 million worldwide, ranking seventh for the year [2013 Worldwide]), with audiences anticipating an IMAX release of MGM's Wizard of (1939) this fall and the release of Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return (2014), a film based on the novel Dorothy of by Roger Staunton Baum, great-grandson of creator L. Frank Baum. Clearly, the magical Land of and journeys to it are highly popular (perhaps even more today than when Baum wrote his novel). And with this year marking thirty-five years since the cinematic release of The Wiz (1978; dir. Sidney Lumet) and a decade of Wicked on Broadway, and next year marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of The Wizard of (1939; dir. Victor Fleming), the Oz-world, creatively, is clearly quite vibrant. A recent study from McFarland shows that that vibrancy extends to the critical world as well. Joining this exploration of the colorful landscape of one finds Alissa Burger's The Wizard of as American Myth, an engaging and intelligent analysis of specific iterations of the story. Burger's volume analyzes six variations on this first uniquely American fairy tale (1): Baum's original novel from 1900, Fleming's film, Lumet's film, Gregory Maguire's parallel novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995), Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman's still-running Broadway musical adapting Maguire's novel, and the RHI Entertainment/SyFy Channel miniseries Tin Man (2007; dir. Nick Willing), a continuation and extension of Baum's vision through a post-apocalyptic world, heightening the science-fiction elements of the story. These six incarnations are discussed--and discussed very well--through a consideration of four constant and recurring themes: gender, race, home, and magic. Within each thematic approach and with each (re)telling of the story, Burger discusses how each tells the quintessentially American story of Dorothy's journey and contributes to an understanding of American identity. Burger's approach is an effective one. By discussing each theme within the respective incarnations, she reinforces the interconnectedness for these works. While the various permutations of the original should be considered on their own and for and by their own merits, there is no single generative text from which each successive version springs forth (34). The Wiz is as much a reaction to the 1939 film as it is to Baum's novel (if not more so), just as both versions of Wicked are informed by years of fandom and variations on the MGM musical and its spinoffs as well as the novel series and the works directly inspired by Baum's prose. The mythic nature of Oz-tales makes any number of adaptations popular, and interest in them seems to stem from multiple sources, so the audience enters the world a variety of ways, each seeming to stand on its own while also standing upon the shoulders of those adapters who paved the yellow brick road before. When the title The Wizard of is uttered, for many the initial vision is of Judy Garland and not the heroine of the book, as each informs the other. …
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