Scott Wright Webb

The Magic of Glinda: Why Transformation is Myth Scott Wright Webb

Every aspect of "The Wizard of Oz" was micro-managed to perfection. This could have resulted in a disjointed final product, but instead, somehow, the movie turned out seamless. What?s the movie about? It?s about a girl from Kansas transported to an amazing land of fantasy on a quest to find her way back home. Hold up! Rewind. The opening scenes are all about Dorothy?s neighbor, Miss Gulch, who shows-up riding a bicycle, bearing a sheriff?s order giving her the right to take away Dorothy?s dog, Toto, to be destroyed. Then Dorothy is transported, not to a world of fantasy, but into the symbolic interpretation of her own life back in Kansas, where each major character in the Land of Oz sprang from Dorothy?s unconscious mind. This is where we find ?Miss Gulch? taken to her extreme as a most evil witch. Now this is all very interesting, and simple, but we want to notice the interplay of these characters as working through a puzzle in Dorothy?s mind. The story is not about Dorothy trying to find her way home because Dorothy has never left home. She was knocked unconscious in her very own bedroom at the beginning, and at the end, we find her having not ventured a single inch from her bed. Her journey is about the transformation of placement, not merely one?s return to it.