'Tin Man'

One of the greatest facets of any storytelling tradition is the ability to bring an old story to new life by recasting it in some way.

Cast your line into a different point of the story, like Gregory Maguire did in “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” and not only is the resulting story a tremendous catch in its own right, it can even swim upstream and forever change the source where it was spawned. There’s an art to this, known only to the best writers.

But often another writer with a smaller vision will visit the fishing hole, reel in a story, and put it in another pond. To be sure, it’s a feat to make the story survive the transplant into a new setting, but if you want readers, viewers or other writers to start making pilgrimages to your new story, you have to make sure the story fits in its new setting.

That was how I felt recently watching the Sci-Fi Network’s “Tin Man,” recorded and recommended to me by my friend Rob the musician. It was clever way to retell “The Wizard of Oz,” but by the time we had finished watching the miniseries, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed. .

The story starts well enough to get your hopes up that it will be an interesting story, as the Dorothy character, D.G. (Zooey Deschanel), is disturbed by a nightmare ― “The Dream,” her father ominously calls it, when D.G. isn’t around ― and before long, she and her parents are whisked off through a cyclone to the Outer Zone.

The Outer Zone is a world under the tyrannical rule of Azkadellia, this story’s version of the Wicked Witch of the West. From this point of the story on, the main source of entertainment is looking for the nods, winks, and sly references to the 1939 MGM movie, spotting the Scarecrow in an apparent felon who had half his brain removed, the Tin Man in a resistance fighter who has been imprisoned in an iron suit for several years, and so on.

Some of these are clever enough to laugh at ― Toto, it turns out is a child’s mispronunciation of “tutor,” the job this particular character had 14 years ago ― but the story itself flounders on the flat acting the principals offer, the evil-for-the-sake-of-being-evil behavior of the witch, and the failure of the story to transcend its source material.

What’s worse, some times it fails even to reach the level of sophistication of the MGM movie, and if you’ve seen the MGM movie, you know what a statement that is. In “The Wizard of Oz,” the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion find the brains, heart, and courage to rescue Dorothy from the witch; here, D.G. has to tell them that they have those things in a scene that carries none of the growth, none of the realization, and none of the meaning of its parallel scene.

When he wrote “Wicked,” Maguire so transformed the Wizard of Oz that the witch’s name became “Elphaba” once and for all. Similarly, the wizard was forever recast as a brutally fascist dictator. These are readings that now show the original work,

“Tin Man” could have done that. The miniseries skims across the surface of a story that could have remarkable depth, where some truly tremendous fish are waiting to be reeled in. Unfortunately, while what they did catch wasn’t floating upside-down, it wasn’t in good shape at all.

wicked

My current read is "Wicked," the book the musical is based on. Simply incredible, though I think Maguire loses steam in a few places and Natasha found the ending dissatisfying. Probably the main appeal to his work is that he gives such a perverse rendering of "Wizard of Oz" that it can't help but appeal to any adult who remembers enjoying either the movie or Baum's book as a child. Elphaba (the wicked witch) is interesting and sympathetically portrayed although she is, ultimately, arguably as wicked as the title claims.

And we're also reading Evangeline "The Wizard of Oz," which is rather interesting because I had never read it growing up, and am reading Maguire's treatment at the same time, and am finding it colors my view of Dorothy's experiences. (The wizard is a total despot, for starters, as bad as Hitler or other fascists who sponsor genocide and abuse their power for personal gain. I actually told Evangeline that I think the wizard is an evil man, which she took as me being silly, which I suppose I was.)

I'm told that Frank Baum revealed in later books that the wizard had done some nasty things to the ruling family in order to come to power; if that's the case, Maguire plays it to the hilt. The wizard overthrows the Oz regent and either kills or imprisons the toddler Ozma before engaging in the wholesale destruction of one group of people after another. Real nasty SOB -- not "a bad wizard but a good man" as he described himself in the movie.

Gina Kolata's 'Flu'

I recently and finally finished reading a book by Gina Kolata about the 1918 Flu; despite the dry-sounding topic, it's really quite fascinating.

Odd choice of recreational reading? I think it was something that grew out of reading "The Canterbury Tales," actually. Craig Rustici, our Chaucer professor, explained that England in Chaucer's day was experiencing massive social upheaval owing to the new upward mobility experienced by laborers, whose skills suddenly were in demand, owing to the effects of bubonic plague.

A disease that made its way from China to Europe along trade routes was a major contributor to the end of the Dark Ages, along with more conventional means of social change such as shifting philosophies and wars.

So while my interest is definitely a layman's -- I can't begin to tell you the molecular biology at play in chickenpox, let alone in plague -- I can't help but find massive outbreaks of disease interesting because of their social consequences.

In the case of the 1918 flu, it led to an entire generation overdosing themselves and their children on antibiotics, affected commerce and transit, as people avoided large crowds, where the risk of exposure to the killer flu was increased. Decades later the memory of the 1918 flu was enough to spur the Ford presidency into trying to vaccinate the entire country, to stave off a feared return of that flu strain.

Kolata's been reviled by those covering the newspaper industry and science reporting for her bias and inaccuracies in her reporting, and perhaps deservedly so; but she writes engagingly and captures the personalities of the people she's writing about in this book. I have another book of hers here about the events leading up to the cloned sheep Dolly, but haven't read it yet.

* * *

My current read is "Wicked," the book the musical is based on. Simply incredible, though I think Maguire loses steam in a few places and Natasha found the ending dissatisfying. Probably the main appeal to his work is that he gives such a perverse rendering of "Wizard of Oz" that it can't help but appeal to any adult who remembers enjoying either the movie or Baum's book as a child. Elphaba (the wicked witch) is interesting and sympathetically portrayed although she is, ultimately, arguably as wicked as the title claims.

And we're also reading Evangeline "The Wizard of Oz," which is rather interesting because I had never read it growing up, and am reading Maguire's treatment at the same time, and am finding it colors my view of Dorothy's experiences. (The wizard is a total despot, for starters, as bad as Hitler or other fascists who sponsor genocide and abuse their power for personal gain. I actually told Evangeline that I think the wizard is an evil man, which she took as me being silly, which I suppose I was.)

So far I recommend it.

'wizard of oz'

Before Voldemort, before the Dark Lord Sauron, there was Glinda the (so-called) Good Witch of the North. Watch this movie, and see her masterful manipulation of naive Dorothy as she catapults herself into ever-increasing power.

It all begins when a mysterious tornado brings Dorothy to Oz, landing her house on top of the Wicked Witch of the East. Glinda, for no apparent reason, gives Dorothy the deceased witch's slippers, earning Dorothy the enmity of the Wicked Witch of the West (masterfully played by Margaret Hamilton), and sends her beyond the Yellow Brick Road to the Wizard of Oz.

It's all a ploy, though, as we discover at the end of the movie, when Dorothy learns all she had to do to get home was click her heels. So why does Glinda do it? Watch as the wizard sends Dorothy to steal the broomstick of the wicked witch and destroys her in the process, only to go and expose the Wizard of Oz himself as a clever con man pretending to have great powers.

In other words, Dorothy unknowingly creates a tremendous power vacuum in Oz. And who do you think is going to move into that vacuum? Glinda, obviously. (The Good Witch of the South is mentioned but never appears. One can only imagine how Glinda dispatched her other rival before dropping a house on the Wicked Witch of the East.)

Brilliantly directed and stunning in its storycraft, "The Wizard of Oz" remains a frightening and disturbing movie in the way it tries to diminish terms like "good" by masquerading evil in so pleasant a form. While this should come as no surprise, given MGM's history of addicting child stars like Judy Garland to speed and other drugs, it should be enough to make any parent think twice before allowing their children to watch such a movie before they are old enough to weigh the themes for themselves.


Copyright © 2003 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Once you understand ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ it’s not so bad

For some reason — I suspect it's because of the overly saccharin flavor of the 1939 MGM Studios movie — "The Wizard of Oz" has become almost as popular on the children's stage as it has for TV.

Watching the movie with my 4- year-old daughter recently, I think I made it as far the Munchkins before 1 became hyperglycemic and collapsed on the floor.

My wife found me about an hour later, deep in a coma, when she came to investigate the fruity smell that had begun to permeate the house. She had to play "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Brazil" for seven days straight before she could revive me.

As it was, some smart aleck had switched the DVD for "Brazil" with "It's a Wonderful Life," and she nearly lost me.

The truth is, watching "The Wizard of Oz" doesn't have to be a nearly fatal experience for anyone.

The first thing to consider is the nature of villainy. It's easy to peg the Wicked Witch of the West for the villain because we've been brought up on a steady diet of antagonists who look evil.

Today's children are used to deformed dark lords like Voldemort and giant flaming catseyes like Sauron. The Wicked Witch of the West not only is green, she has a pointy hat and a broomstick, and she has a wicked cackle. Cruelest of all, in Baum's book, she threatens to make Dorothy do housework.

Pish-posh, I tell you. We should be so lucky to live in a world where evil has bad breath and can be identified so easily, or where the bad guy always has horns on his head. The world isn't that simple. Even the Devil himself, when he can't appear as an angel of light, usually can manage at least to look like a newspaper editor or the secretary of education.

If you look at the witch's motivation, she's actually very harmless. All she wants is the ruby slippers that belonged to her sister, the Wicked Witch of the East, the poor woman who had the misfortune of standing where Dorothy's house landed.

That seems like a harmless enough request. If a house landed on my brother, I think the least someone could do would be to give me the shoes he was wearing at the time, as a keepsake.

(I might not be too keen on wearing them myself if they were ruby red, or even silver like the shoes in the book, but it doesn't seem likely the witches were called wicked because they had impeccable fashion sense.)

Be that as it may, the witch wants her sister's slippers. But for reasons not readily apparent, Glinda, who has been introduced as the Good Witch of the North, decides to put the slippers on Dorothy's feet.

It's important to note that there's no discussion here. Glinda doesn't ask Dorothy if she wants to wear the slippers. She doesn't even check to see if the colors will go well with what Dorothy is wearing. She just twinkles her magic wand, and voila! Dorothy is now wearing the ruby slippers of a dead woman.

In the process, she also receives the enmity of the Wicked Witch of the West, who is prepared to make Dorothy fold the laundry to get them back, if it comes to that.

Now you might think that since all Dorothy wants is to go home and that since Glinda is a good witch, she might be willing to give her a hand. But no, Glinda insists that the only person who can help Dorothy is the Wizard of Oz, the ruler of a far-off city.

So Dorothy has to trek all the way to Oz, picking up help as she goes from such unlikely sources as the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man and Elton John. In the movie, she has the added travail of hair that can't decide how it's supposed to be done, with pigtails that change their length at regular intervals and frequently don't match.

When Dorothy finally does reach Oz, with the bad hair days and terrible songs now just painful memories, the wizard reveals that he has a longstanding grudge with the wicked witch himself and sends Dorothy to get the witch's broomstick.

It's during this point of the story that Dorothy is captured, and her friends muster the courage, compassion and musical talent no one ever knew they had to rescue her. They not only rescue her, they get the broom and kill the Wicked Witch of the West in the process.

By now, it should become increasingly clear why Glinda gave Dorothy the slippers. When she landed in Oz, Dorothy killed the Wicked Witch of the East. Now she and her friends have killed the Wicked Witch of the West Once they return to Oz, Toto the annoying yipyip dog reveals to everyone that "Great and Powerful Oz" is a con man who has been using his razzle-dazzle and flair for the theatrical to lord it over the superstitious residents of Oz. Disgraced, he leaves Oz in a balloon and is never seen again.

At this point, with two wicked witches dead and the wizard exposed as a charlatan, Dorothy unknowingly has created a tremendous power vacuum in the political and magical structure of Oz.

Who is left to fill that vacuum? Glinda, obviously. The Good Witch of the South is mentioned but never appears. One can only imagine how Glinda dispatched her other rival before dropping a house on the Wicked Witch of the East.

Dorothy, dupe that she is, laments that she has no way to go home. But the truth is that she could have gone home any time, as every fan of the story knows, by clicking her heels. That is exactly what she does, and she remains blissfully unaware of the horrors she has unleashed upon Oz.

With Dorothy now gone, we can only imagine how Glinda has enslaved the Munchkins, melted the Tin Man for spare parts, and sicced flying monkeys on any who dare to oppose her iron-fisted rule.

I've shared my vision for "The Wizard of Oz" with several friends and co-workers, and none of them has been able to find any holes in my thinking. Several have remarked that they never will be able to see the movie the same way again.

I hope you have a similar experience the next time a small child convinces you to pop the movie into the DVD player. If not, make sure you have a copy of "Brazil" handy