![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Oz-end.jpg\" "\\"Oz")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
O<\/span>ver the past several months, I’ve happened to hear a few different people talking about The Wizard of Oz<\/em>, and though the general consensus on the film remains love, there have been some complaints that have surfaced repeatedly. Now, I know most of the people mentioning these things love the film, so we’re all really on the same page. I just think these two particular complains have some pretty decent defenses, at least in my head. Uh, spoilers for The Wizard of Oz<\/em>, I guess.<\/p>\n The argument here is that Dorothy has the red shoes the whole time and, as Glinda says at the end of the film, she always had the power to go home. All Glinda would’ve had to do is tell Dorothy to click her heels together and say “there’s no place like home” and BAM. No need to go see the Wizard, no need to kill the Wicked Witch, etc. In this reading, Glinda merely wants Dorothy to do her dirty work for her to get rid of her rival. I think that’s an interesting story (and Glinda as a not-so-good-witch is the thread taken up by Wicked<\/em>), but really, I don’t think Dorothy could’ve gone home earlier. Glinda tells her she always had the power to go home, but she didn’t tell her before because she wouldn’t have believed it. But really, in order to go home what she has to believe isn’t that clicking some shoes together and saying a magic phrase will send her home, but that “there’s no place like home.” She had to go through the journey to Oz to really believe that, and without that belief, I don’t think any amount of heel clicking would’ve worked.<\/p>\n I can definitely see this being a valid reading. Dorothy does say she’ll never leave again after she returns, but I don’t know that we need to read this at face value. It’s a pretty natural thing to say right after coming through a traumatic situation and finding yourself safe. In a broader sense, the film could be interpreted as saying that new, outside things are bad – Dorothy also says that everything she wants is right in her own backyard. But I think the message is really one of contentment. It’s fine to be ambitious and want to see new things, but if you can’t manage to find contentment where you are, chances are you won’t find it elsewhere, either. Add in the fact that all the characters in Oz actually already had the qualities they sought from the Wizard, and the journey becomes one of seeking your own inner strengths and the value of those around you, instead of believing you have to go somewhere else and be validated by someone else in order to be happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the past several months, I’ve happened to hear a few different people talking about The Wizard of Oz, and though the general consensus on the film remains love, there have been some complaints that have surfaced repeatedly. Now, I know most of the people mentioning these things love the film, so we’re all really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[1558],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Oz-end.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":32760,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/top-ten-judy-garland-films\/","url_meta":{"origin":33484,"position":0},"title":"Top Ten: Judy Garland Films","author":"Jandy","date":"June 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was younger, I went through a phase of wanting to celebrate my favorite stars' birthdays by watching their movies. The only one I managed to very successfully was Judy Garland, whose birthday on June 10th I celebrated with marathon viewings several years in a row. To this day,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Judy-Garland-featured.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":32793,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/top-ten-roger-eberts-great-movies\/","url_meta":{"origin":33484,"position":1},"title":"Top Ten: Roger Ebert’s Great Movies","author":"Jandy","date":"June 18, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Today would have been Roger Ebert's 71st birthday had he not recently passed away. What better way to celebrate his life than to remember the films that he singled out for particular praise in his Great Movies series? Ebert did not rank these films; in fact, he added them only\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/ebert.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2121,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/early-preview-screening-hippie-hippie-shake\/","url_meta":{"origin":33484,"position":2},"title":"Early Preview Screening: Hippie Hippie Shake","author":"Jandy","date":"March 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This is my first film post over at Row Three, a group film blog that I'm going to be writing for now. I'll still do stuff here, don't worry. Not like I was currently doing a lot anyway. And when I post stuff over there, I'll link it from here.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Hippie Hippie Shake cast on location","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/hhs-location-b21-cropped.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":141,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/adaptation-rexamining-fidelity-criticism\/","url_meta":{"origin":33484,"position":3},"title":"Adaptation – Rexamining Fidelity Criticism","author":"Jandy","date":"November 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Most film criticism dealing with adaptations of books focuses on how closely the film sticks to the book. In other words, an adaptation is often judged based on whether or not the film accurately recreates its source. And of course, many films do try to be faithful to their sources,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36076,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/challenge-week-26-april-in-paris\/","url_meta":{"origin":33484,"position":4},"title":"Challenge Week 26: April in Paris","author":"Jandy","date":"July 5, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Naomi and I share a lot of the same taste, particularly when it comes to classic Hollywood - and musicals! I figured she'd try to give me something in that area, and I was right, but she had to dig through my seen and unseen lists for a while to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/tf-feat2-aprilinparis.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":36782,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/dorothy-sayers-on-originality\/","url_meta":{"origin":33484,"position":5},"title":"Dorothy Sayers on originality","author":"Jandy","date":"July 26, 2019","format":"quote","excerpt":"\"The demand for 'originality' - with the implication that the reminiscence of other writers is a sin against originality and a defect in the work - is a recent one and would have seemed quite ludicrous to poets of the Augustan Age, or of Shakespeare's time. The traditional view is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Commonplace"","block_context":{"text":"Commonplace","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/commonplace\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}First Complaint: Glinda is a jerk who sends Dorothy on a wild goose chase when she could go home all along<\/h4>\n
Second Complaint: The message of the film is that you should never leave home<\/h4>\n