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News Tue Aug 04 2009
The Wizard of Oz: Book vs. Movie
Anthony Horowitz of the Telegraph writes that he hated the movie version of The Wizard of Oz as a child. He notes that there are vast differences between the book and the movie, and those of us who read the book in August 2008 will certainly agree. Here Horowitz expounds on L. Frank Baum's life, revealing him to be a failure at several careers and something of a white supremacist (wasn't aware of that one myself), and explores what makes Oz such a fascinating world. Says Horowitz on one of the major differences between the movie and the book:
...the storytelling is surprisingly violent. The film gave us the winged monkeys but spared us the wild crows, sent out by the Wicked Witch with the command: 'Peck out their eyes and tear them to pieces!' Forty of them are strangled by the Scarecrow who is probably not singing while he does it, while in the same chapter 40 wolves are decapitated by the Tin Man.
Forty wolves and 40 crows. I'm not sure those numbers are accidental for it seems to me that the books could have been almost purposefully in the style of the Bible. We are given as much detail about Oz as we are about the Garden of Eden. God-like archetypes - the wizard in particular - loom over the action. Things happen because they must.
