son does, if only because I was vaguely traumatized by the Nome King turning people into ornaments in Ozma of Oz when I was eight. I like the Oz stories because they are quintessential fairy stories— bizarre adventures through an outlandish world, whose obstacles can be overcome by the everyman protagonist if they remain kind, clever, and observant. This is the tone of the 1939 movie as well. Dorothy advances her quest( helping the Scarecrow and the Tin Man, calming the Lion, et cetera) by doing her best to be helpful and civil in every situation. Her two greatest victories in the movie, defeating the Wicked Witch and unmasking the Wizard, she accomplishes by sticking to these values— she tries to put out a fire and melts the witch accidentally,
and she stays and challenges the Wizard when he goes back on his promise to help her and her friends. In a slightly messy marriage with the movie’ s other theme,“ there’ s no place like home,” Dorothy is able to get back to Kansas by sticking to her values as well— by focusing on how important her home and family are to her, she’ s able to return to them. It’ s a very simple story, but by no means a bad one, and it holds up as a movie kids can enjoy almost a century since its release.
Wicked, written decades later and aimed at a very different audience, has a drastically different theme. Gone is all the simplicity of the original books and the iconic movie. Instead, our protagonist Elphaba is unfairly maligned by almost everyone and surrounded by people she cannot trust. As a sympathetic
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