I wrote in the itinerary "September: The Wizard of Oz" ... and to be honest that topic was almost chosen at random just to make it a challenge for me to remember to write in this.
This is going to be a bit of a challenge... I haven't seen the film in decades and really have no clue why I wrote that the Wizard of Oz is the next Subject for Writings on Subjects (New 2 Stronger) to cover.
The main angle I was thinking of was "Things from youth that are different after you re-view them as an adult" ... and I narrowed it down to three choices...
1. Summer Rental (1985) starring John Candy
2. Waiting for Godot
3. Wizard of Oz
Summer Rental was a film I always considered as a B-rank Candy offering as opposed to his A work (Planes/Trains/Automobiles, Great Outdoors, Uncle Buck, etc. being his "A" work). I wanted to give Summer Rental a try and see why I filed it away as one of John's lesser works ... and even after re-seeing it... I don't think I was wrong ... it's a B+ Candy film if anything more than a B.
Waiting for Godot was something I didn't like at all when I watched it as a 26 year old person ... I thought it was boring, contrived, and pointless. This 36 year old version of me re-watched that ... and holy crap ... I got it about 1000% more than 26 year old me did.
In one sense, going back and watching Waiting for Godot again and comparing what 26 year old me thought of it to what 36 year old me thinks of it ... made me feel like I was a living version of one of Beckett's other works, "Krapp's Last Tape" ... which is a solitary play about this dude listening to old recordings he made on a tape recorder of what he thought of life many years ago ... and presently ruminating and lamenting them to the audience (sort of what N. MacDonald does in "Dirty Work" if you young folks are looking for something you'd be familiar with).
Me just Krapp's Last Taping out big time to Godot ... would be a good article ... but man alive, man.... it'd be too heavy. Way too heavy, man. I could probably Krapp out pretty loose for about a few thousand words for Godot but it'd be pretty heavy, guys.
If you wanna Krapp out for Godot... you guys can watch "Krapp's Last Tape", and then "Waiting for Godot" ... and you can Krapp the heck out for Godot yourselves in your own time.
So If we're not doing Summer Rental (1985) starring John Candy as this month's topic, and we're not doing Waiting for Godot... looks like we're gonna do the Wizard of Oz after all.
Sections:
1) Formula
2) Then and Now ... my view of it as a growned-up person as opposed to my view of it as a young person
3) What would a modern day version of it be?
The Wizard of Oz's Formula
Let me clue you guys in on something that ALWAYS works in writing... and that's the Four Person Journey and it is maybe the hallmark style of fiction.
I remember I closed this blog like a few years ago because I was gonna write a book and actually like try and "make it" as a writer... like a Pro Writer, you know? I was gonna do a gigantic four-person journey that would have been like eight million words. I gave up on it early because fiction is not something I am really versed in. My short story from early 2019, "The Journey", was a short 3-person Journey (with parts 3-80 left blank in case one day I do want to turn it into a full-out booky-book).
Most Pro Writers have done good 4-person Journeys. A more modern one is Stand By Me which is S. King's 4PJ where four teens wanna go see a dead guy in the forest so they embark on a life-altering adventure.
I'm surprised, after playing Final Fantasy XV the last few weeks, that "Stand by Me" is huuuge in Japan. I think the guy from "Legends of Localization" did an article on this. Stand By Me is maybe bigger in Japan than it is anywhere else. I don't think it's the formula of the movie that they wig out for... I think it's the dead body part though. There's been a lot of articles lately about this spooky forest in Japan where you can see a dead body most likely .... and that forest has been around Japan folklore for a long time... so I think the idea of four teens going on adventure just to see a dead guy is relatable-to for Japanese people. Still, the popularity of Stand By Me in Japan is slightly baffling ... maybe the localization of the film was just well-done or something.
Speaking of Final Fantasy.... that's a Four Person Journey as well. The most recent one is a total Four Person Journey with a car too. I put-off playing Final Fantasy Fifteen for a few years because I didn't think the Final Fantasy series has really lived up to its name for a good while. I think The Tenth One (FFX) was the last one I thought was good.... for the record I believe 6, 7, and 4 are the best ones. I really thought Fifteen was going to be an emo-laden snooze-festival but that is not the case... it is a great game... and even if the emo-style character designs are off-putting at first these four bros became my bros pretty quickly and by the third gas-station I felt like I KNEW these guys in real life.
The most popular of all time Four-Person Journey is probably Journey to the West. In that Chinese Epic, Sanzang must depart China and travel to India to retrieve ancient Buddhist scriptures ... and along the way makes the most unlikeliest of amigos... an out-of-control Monkey King, a lecherous Pig man, and a Swamp Monster who roils the waterways and eats travelers. It's the most well-known, epic, and at times strange Four Man Walker you're ever gonna get into.
It's so long, like millions of words, and there's some whacky stuff in Journey to the West. There's a chapter where they are at this all-women town with no dudes in it.... and Sanzang drinks a bunch of water because he's thirsty... then asks how the ladies make babies if the town has no dudes... and they say they have a special holy water that makes them get pregnant without doing any sex at all .... and Sanzang just spits out the water he's drinking and is all "OH CRAP! I'M PREGNANT!!!" ... but it's okay because Monkey King sneaks into a secret cave that has anti-pregnancy holy water to stop Sanzang's pregnancy.
I wonder if the Wizard of Oz's author one L. Frank Baum read Journey to the West. It was compiled from vocal legends into the text we read today in the 16th century... but I don't think there's a real translation of it to english until well after L. Frank's time. There is a part of Wizard of Oz that leads me to think L. Frank may have read Journey to the West somehow (maybe he could read Chinese, I don't know). The Monkeys of the Wicked Witch. She controls the out-of-control winged-monkeys with a golden cap, Sanzang controls the out-of-control Monkey King with a piece of golden head-wear entrusted to him by Guan Yin.
Gold head wear to control out-of-control monkeys. It could be a coincidence or it could be a shout out by Baum to the most epic Four-Person Walking Text of All Time.
I do feel the unlikely comrades Dorothy meets is slightly similar to Journey to the West. She meets three troubled compadres as well... a Scare Crow who feels he has no brains, a Tin Woodman who feels he has no heart, and a Cowardly Lion who thinks he lacks courage. They are not ex-criminals banished from heaven who are trying to find remorse as the compadres to Sanzang are in Journey to the West ... but they are very odd and even possibly frightening characters in their own right.
Another similarity is the main character is the "driver of the story" and in some regard is NOT the main character, per se, as the other characters have more depth. Sanzang is almost a place holder in Journey as the "Why" they have to go on this Journey... and most of the book is Monkey flying around the damned earth to bail this guy out of all the messes he gets into ... such as getting pregnant even, as mentioned above.
In Wizard, Dorothy is definitely more of a "story driver" than a main character. She's the "Why" they have to get to the Emerald City and the other characters get more depth and text/screen time devoted to them. In Baum's later Oz works, he opens his books by thanking his fans and in one he notes that from the mail he received from children... they don't like when Dorothy is not given a lot of text time in an Oz book and he vowed to make her the central character again ... it is in that sense that this "driver" worked... the children experience the text AS her... as a normal person from a normal world (Kansas in this case) who is transported to a land of imagination. The young reader doesn't view Dorothy as a character from Oz, she is from Kansas in the USA in Actual Reality. They experience the world of Oz through the "main" character of Dorothy.
In Journey, the vulnerable, innocent, and "real" Sanzang is who the reader "becomes" as they travel through the text. This "driver" main character, I feel, is another similarity between them.
This is not to say that despite a bit of over-lap that these two texts are very similar or anything. I don't think the themes, dialogue, nuances, style, or very much else is similar between Wizard of Oz and Journey to the West. They are just Four Person Travel books ... with possibly a slight shoutout here and there by Baum to Journey which is considered the gold standard of the genre.
Due to Journey not being well-known in the Americas and Europe... I'd venture to say that L. Frank Baum's four person travel text, first published in 1900, is the most well known of the Four Person Travel genre in the Western World.
Anyways, the next section will look at how young-me viewed it and how old-me now regards it. Also, the differences between the text version and film version will be highlighted as well.
Then and Now
(One important note that needs to be noted is that Young Me saw the Movie while Old Me read the book.... so there's that involved also.)
The 1939 film, the Wizard of Oz, was basically the first blockbuster movie. It was not just in full color but it was vivid as all heck. I mean, one thing I notice about other "first color" events in movies and TV is the novelty of getting to work with color was not lost on the artists of the era. If you watch TV's first big-time full-color shows like Batman (1966), or Ultra Man (1966) ... you notice very fast that they use vivid and contrasting colors out of the wazoo.... the intro to Ultra Man features paint mixing even! This 1939 film is similar to those TV color firsts in the 60s where they really got everything they could out of their chance to work with color.
I think why it was chosen for the first color film adaption of a text was because it is very colorfully written but almost using standard primary colors more than anything. The munchkins were a pale blue society, the winkies (who don't appear in the film) were a full on yellow society, and the citizens of the Emerald City were a green folk*.
The movie was an aesthetic event more than anything. It is a good movie and made the epic Four Person Journey genre hugely popular for another century... but the movie and book are not the same cup of tea, really.
As a kid, I never really learned very much from the Wizard of Oz film... it was just a cool fun movie that I knew was old and looked cool for something that was that old.
Reading the text as an adult, you pick up on the themes of it more quickly... and yes most of them are well shown in the film but in text these themes and the opinions of the writer come through more clearly.
In the film, the audience does realize that the Scarecrow was smart all along, and the Tin Woodman was a nice guy all along, and the Lion was actually pretty courageous all along... but it's not as pronounced as it is in the book.
Throughout the 1900 narrative, before they even make it to Oz, the reader picks up that these three characters are just being too hard on themselves and are over-compensating for the character flaws they perceive is wrong with themselves.
The Scare Crow from the get-go is basically the party's strategist. He is so hung-up and worried that he's not smart that he has basically devoted his entire being to overcome this perceived flaw in his person that all he tries to do in every chapter is think up ways to help his friends get out of difficult-to-manage situations.
The Tin Woodman, is so worried that he is an emotionless automaton that he does nothing all day but think of how to project himself unto the world in a manner that is perceived as being caring and full of empathy because he believes he has no heart and is deeply worried about that. As they walk he looks down at the yellow brick road to see if any ants are on it, even, so as to not step on any. He really over-compensates his behavior to mitigate his perceived weaknesses.
The Cowardly Lion, in the film is a scaredy cat but in the book he's a regular walking-on-all-fours lion's lion. He is definitely scared of the other monsters in Oz (in the book there's way more than "Lions and Tigers and Bears" in it, there's legit monsters).... and in Oz a Lion is not a big deal when there's flying monkeys and kalidahs and other fantasy monsters. In the film its not really told to the viewer that a lion is not a huge deal in the Oz universe. In the text, he's worried about monsters stronger than him, and over-exagerates his constant fear by roaring and putting on a big show. In that sense he's cowardly in the book ... but not so much as in the film where he's really a more innocent man-lion guy. In order to overcome this constant fear he never runs away from a battle in the Oz book ... he fights a gang of kalidahs (who do not appear in the film) in one chapter and those things are vicious.
Before the end of the book, you are already shown that these three characters are not flawed at all. The guy who thinks he's dumb is very smart, the guy who thinks he's heartless has more empathy than anyone, and the guy who thinks he's a coward will fight solo in outnumbered battles against tiger-headed bear monsters.
In the film, this is shown to a degree... but I find the awarding of the gimmicks to them at the end is a little forced. In the book the "You Had it All Along!" theme grows with the characters from chapter to chapter... and by a certain point of the book you know these guys got it even if they think they don't. The other portion of the awarding of the gimmick-trinkets in the film that is totally different from the text is that ... the characters kind of dig the trinkets in the movie and they feel like they've succeeded in their journey.
The BIGGEST difference in the text and film of Wizard of Oz is how big of a bozo, or a "humbug", the Wizard of Oz actually is. In the film he's a bit of a let-down but still a likeable character to some extent... but in the book.... after reading many chapters (which takes longer than watching a movie)... and finally they get to meet this guy they wanted to meet... and guess what...he's a bum! He's not even anything at all.... he's not even from Oz... he's from Omaha which is even LAMER than Kansas is!
Older me loves this book. It's a pretty shaggy dog ending... well it's not an ending in the book actually, there's a few chapters after the Oz let-down part. In the film the Used Car Salesmanhood of the Wizard of Oz is not as memorable to the viewer. The movie is really beautiful, with the colors, the music, etc... but the best part of the book is the total humbugerry of the Wizard. I think many children who grew up reading the L. Frank Baum's children books probably grew up to be adults with a great sense of humor and also a great understanding of the how Life Itself is sometimes in such bad taste and is for the most-part such a Let Down.
I'm not surprised American literature is one of society's most humor-based bodies of literature. If you take the George Ades, the Mark Twains, and the L. Frank Baums (and even to a lesser extent the Thorne Smiths and a couple others) ... you have some real Humorists here.
The Humorist is not the same thing as a Comedian. If life was a current-era video game... the Humorist is what you level up to when you gain 15,000 experience points as a Comedian and have already used another 15,000 experience points to unlock all the skill-branch tree slots in the Comedian skill set.
L. Frank is a Humorist, 100%. I don't even think there's that many, especially in now-a-times era. I really think young people in the 20th century (1900s) grew up versed in Humor from a young age. I'm not sure that's the case in present era times.
To me, the Humorist understands that Life Itself is a Big Letdown and that we have to make the best within ourselves to make light of an otherwise bland and unjust world. The Humorist has no political slant to his or hers view of the world... the Humorist makes light and humor out of the difficulties of life using mostly base-emotions and universally relatable-to themes.
Previous to recently, having only seen the film and never read the book from 1900 it was based upon, I would have never known L. Frank Baum is in the Humorist category ... If you would have asked me what the book of Wizard of Oz was like as a kid who only saw the movie, I'd probably say, it was probably just some run-of-the-mill fairy tale ... but no... this is a real Humorist text.
Anyways, we forgot a character above. We didn't look at what Dorothy was worried about and trying to over exaggerate in her understanding of herself and the world around her. That is to say, what is the "driver" of the text over-compensating for? Thus to say, the driver character of the text being the "reader" themselves. That is to say... what is the reader of the text of the Wizard of Oz trying to overcome?
To me the answer is "boredom" for the Dorothy character. She lives in Kansas at a farm of her adoptive parents (Aunty Em) and is completely bored with life. She is one day transported to a land of total imaginative excitement and adventure. This is one of the things the film gets 100% right, even better than the book does.... because her world is Black and White prior to arriving at the land of Oz in the film... which to describe how well this must have worked in 1939... the first block busting color film ... that starts out on a black and white farm in Kansas ... and then the viewer is whisked away to an aesthetic bounty of color and adventure. That's something story-telling wise and technology-advancement-wise that cannot be recreated. The first big budget color film using the theme of Dorothy/Reader's lame life and then blasting it with visual stimuli that to-that-date had never been seen before? It's a storytelling event that could only really exist once at the level that it must have worked so well in 1939.
Dorothy, the driver of the story, the eyes/ears/nose/hands of who's the reader experiences the World of Oz from... always had that imagination inside of them.... they could have "went home" whenever they wanted... whether by clicking the Ruby Slippers a number of times or just by simply closing the book and putting it down. They picked up that book and were drawn into it out of boredom, they wanted to escape to a land of interesting adventures.
Just like the the other three characters (Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Lion) who had it in themselves the whole time... the reader had that imagination inside of themselves the entire time even if they thought they didn't ... for in the end, the Wizard of Oz, was just words written down on paper. It was the reader's own imagination that brought those words to life.
*(Note: The Emerald City in the text of Oz is such a sham that our heroes are given goggles when they enter the city which tint the world green ... the "Emerald City" in the book is actually all Pale White like a paint primer white. I'm not sure this is inferred to the viewer in the film version.)
A More Modern Version
I would still like to write a really long Four Person Journey genre of text one day... but I think as experimental with writing as I am that it would not be very similar at all to the Wizard of Oz. However, it is interesting to think of what a modern version of it would be like.
Is today's society hung up on the same relatable-to problems as society was in 1900? Is boredom really a big deal in today's fast paced, stimulus over-loaded, world? Not really.
Are people walking around scratching their heads over if they are smart-enough, or kind-enough, or courageous-enough? I guess but I'm not sure you'd classify those as the top three mental hang-ups of 2019's world.
It would be fun to think up base human emotions that create deep-seeded problems for people in today's society and think up antithesis emotions for them ... and then write a story about four people who suffer from difficulties common in today's worried brains ... but who in the end were not actually suffering from it and were simply over-compensating for perceived faults in their character.
I could think of some, but I don't know, I'm sure you can think of some of your own. What are you worried about all the time that you perceive is a deep-rooted character flaw in your own heart? Maybe you think about it so much because being the opposite of that is important to you. If that something is important to you ... and you're trying hard to overcome your personal struggles and achieve that... then maybe it's not even a character flaw at all. Who knows.
Conclusion
Those are the main themes of the Four-Person Walking-Arounder genre. Four people on a long almost-never ending quest to find "something." It is a genre that's endured for so many centuries because it's very fulfilling personally for the writer to write one, I think.
