The Wizard of Oz: Under the Microscope

     Like everyone else, I grew up watching the Wizard of Oz on television eagerly looking forward to every single airing.  When it came out on videocassette I made sure to snatch up a copy.  It is a movie that’s legend will live on forever freezing Judy Garland in time as the one and only “Dorothy.    I have to admit that when I was a little kid there were parts of that movie that really scared the be Je$u$ out of me and held the magical mystical power to leave me mesmerized.

       It took me forever to realize that Dorothy actually hit her head and dreamed this whole little adventure!  Even when she woke up at the end with her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry surrounding her bed I didn’t catch on.  It blows my mind now to realize just how dense I was.  Talk about head up the a$$ syndrome taking its toll.  Ahh, innocence!!!  Kids today aren’t so easily fooled and have more marbles rolling around upstairs than I ever could have hoped to have at that age.  


       In my impressionable youth I never once contemplated that the witch was eliminated by Dorothy throwing water on her head.  Today it was raining  while I waited for the school bus with my son and I got to thinking….that witch must have never had a bath if water was lethal to her.  Think how that woman must have reeked!!  I mean seriously, her skin was green!!  What powerful leverage to convince kids to take a bath!! You don’t wash, your skin will turn green like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz!!  There was a reason why everyone started dancing and singing “Ding Dong the Wicked Witch is Dead!!”  Not only was she meaner than snot, but she had to reek too.  I will have to give her credit, that witchy screechy laugh of hers is stereotypically nails on the chalkboard fabulous.

        When I was a little kid I was terrified of the flying monkeys.  Do you remember that scene where the witch is in the window looking out and a million monkeys are flying by??  That segment used to freak me out.  The monkeys then proceed to swoop down and start tearing the scarecrow to smithereens.  Maybe the kids of today wouldn’t be horrified by a scarecrow head laying on the ground screaming with all his straw all around him, but I was!!!  

        There is one point that really gets me  and I just realized it.  Glenda, the good witch of the North knew all along  that all Dorothy had to do was tap her heels and repeat “There is no place like home” three times and she would be right back to good ole black and white Kansas.  I realize that the movie would have been a lot shorter if she would have shared that with the class in the beginning, but how infuriating for Dorothy!!  If I would have been Dorothy, I may have had to wipe that simpering smile off her face by kicking her butt clear back to Munchkin Land with my magical ruby slippers, especially after having the $hit scared out of me by the flying monkeys and that smelly old green witch melting before my eyes! Just saying!  

     The story was written to reveal a moral and highlight what Dorothy had learned from her adventures which is sadly lacking in today’s movies.  “The “Wizard of Oz” will always be a timeless example of the progress the production of motion pictures had made in those early years.  It was 1939’s technological breakthrough that wowed the world only comparable to the present day effects of “Avatar”!  Even though decades have passed, the fanciful timelessness of the story continues to captivate audiences of all ages to this day.  Until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.