The is WMG of the movie; see Land of Oz and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for theories about the original books by Frank Baum
- I've been watching that movie for nearly 45 years, and I always read that as Em refraining from calling Gulch a "bitch", or even "cunt". But that's just me.
- According to Christian teachings, any insult would do. Jesus says in Matthew 21 that even an insult could get someone in very serious trouble. (Source: This troper is Christian) Still, as mean as Miss Gulch is, saying "too good a Christian" to do something isn't exactly a good Christian thing to do, but I digress.
The Wicked Witch of the West shows up and demands to know who murdered her sister and tries to claim her sister's slippers as her rightful property. Glinda coldly rebuffs her and threatens to kill her with another dropped house. She then sends Dorothy on an unnecessary errand to the Wizard of Oz.
The Wizard figures that Dorothy is a tool of Glinda and sends her to fight and kill a far superior opponent, hoping the Witch of the West will do her in. This fails when Dorothy's companions break into the Witch's home and murder her by accident. Glinda then causes the Wizard's balloon to go out of control and blow away, getting him out of the picture. Since we never hear from the Good Witch of the South, we can only assume that Glinda got rid of her some other way. This leaves Glinda as the only remaining powerful entity in all of Oz. She installs the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion as puppet rulers and sends Dorothy home. Glinda now has control over all of Oz, including the Emerald City's lucrative opium (poppy) trade. Just as Planned.
- This theory sounds familiar. I wonder, where have I heard it before?
- The Wicked Witch of the West was still clearly willing to kill Dorothy to get her hands on the shoes. Even if they were rightfully hers, that's a bit excessive.
- But Glinda still knowingly set Dorothy up as her fall-girl. Whether the Wicked Witch was willing to kill Dorothy or not, Dorothy wouldn't be in danger without Glinda putting her there.
- The Plan certainly isn't perfect. According to Return to Oz, the Ruby Slippers ended up in the hands of the Nome King, who used their power to take over Oz. Presumably, Glinda was executed when the Emerald City fell. Even after Oz is restored, her secrets are concealed by the new ruler, Ozma, for her own purposes.
- Also, where is the Good Witch of the South?
- Cracked provides a pretty thorough explanation of this here.
- Just one little thing: Dorothy murdered neither witch, accidentally or otherwise. "Accidental murder" can only come under specific circumstances, such as "felony murder" and intending to cause severe injury, doing something clearly dangerous, and inadvertently killing a person. Dorothy was inside the house being carried by the tornado, and had no control over it. (The Wicked Witch of the East was Too Dumb to Live, flying on her broomstick next to a tornado, cackling for all she was worth.) Dorothy's killing of the Wicked Witch of the West was unpredictable from a person in Dorothy's position: water caused the WWoW to melt???
- She briefly became lucid due to a bump on the head when her flying house malfunctioned and crashed... When she "sees" Auntie Em in the crystal ball, it's a sign that she's starting to slip back into delusion. By the time she meets the Wizard, she's already half-hallucinating and thinks she sees and hears the Wizard talk about being from "her world" and flying "back" to it. At the end of the movie, she sinks fully back into her delusional madness and becomes a ward of the Emerald City. The Slippers remain on her until her death.
Also, if there's a time lord, there must be a Haruhi as well.
- "Water is made of..." The internet will be presented to you in a tasteful ceremony on the steps of town hall. Now buy me a new keyboard with your fancy winnings.
- Dorothy is America (she desires a return to the status quo), the Scarecrow is the USSR (he seeks validation of its system of government), the Tin Man is Nazi-occupied nations (struggling to regain their national character), and the Cowardly Lion is Great Britain (struggling to regain recognition of status as a world power). Toto represents American minorities (seen as a lesser force which nevertheless proves invaluable to the war effort).
- The Wicked Witch of the East is Japan, the Wicked Witch of the West is Nazi Germany, the flying monkeys are the Luftwaffe, and the Winkie soldiers are the German people.
- Glinda the Good is the fleeting promise of peace, the Munchkins are the people of Japan, and the Yellow Brick Road is the journey to prewar norms.
- The house dropped on the Eastern witch is the atomic bomb, and the bucket of water thrown on the Western witch is the chain of events begun by the Normandy invasion. The ruby slippers are the prosperity and political influence offered by being a major world power.
- The Emerald City is the dream of a post-Depression prosperous future, and the Wizard is FDR (who unintentionally abandons Dorothy/America in her time of need). The poppy field represents World War I, whose status as the "war to end all wars" lulled the major world powers into a false sense of security. (Also note Flanders Fields.)
- The Kansas farm and all its inhabitants represent a nostalgic, sepia-tinted vision of American life before the modernized nightmare begun by WWI. The fact that Dorothy returns to it was an optimistic footnote added by the time-traveller.
- That's a complex theory, filled with in-depth symbolism. It also depends on the idea that Japan surrendered first in WW2. As it turned out, Germany was defeated earlier.
- The writer didn't get everything right; they might have jumped around in the time-stream a bit and gotten mixed-up. Maybe all the competent time-travelers were under contract to Warner Brothers, and Jack wouldn't lend them out. Or, even more likely, the release of the film affected the events of the war itself.
- Partially jossed. The film is based off of a book written by L. Frank Baum in 1900. This would mean that he would have to be a time traveler as well. In addition to that, couldn't these so called "Time traveling writers" do something more useful? Like warn us in a more direct fashion?
- Maybe he was a sociopathic jerk? Or a time travelling Nazi?
- Or he did it as a fairy tale, because he was a writer AND a time traveller, and, after time travelling to the Victorian Times, decided kids needed decent books that were fun and entertaining to read, and also to not upset the world at the time and start WWII early, causing history to change.
- That's a complex theory, filled with in-depth symbolism. It also depends on the idea that Japan surrendered first in WW2. As it turned out, Germany was defeated earlier.
The brilliant Technicolor of Oz is the temptation. She may stay or she may return home to the gray dustbowl. If she returns home, she lives and recovers. If she stays in Oz, she dies.
- To reword that, Dorothy's exposure to dust, debris, and being hit on the head almost killed her, and Oz was a near-death experience. The entire thing was either a genuine vision of the afterlife (or a hallucination of same if you think near-death experiences are all created by the brain). She saw what could be her eternal reward, which is colorful and full of adventure, unlike Kansas. But she really was dying the whole time, and if she had chosen to stay in Oz she would have died in the real world.
- Watch Charley Grapewin's face as Dorothy tells what happened to her. This is exactly how he is playing it. He is the only one who doesn't laugh with the others, and says "Of course we believe you, Dorothy."
It wasn't a dream. It was a place. I remember some of it wasn't very nice, but most of it was beautiful! But all the same, all I kept saying to everyone was "I want to go home," and they sent me home. Many people describe their own near-death experiences in similar terms.- This is the opposite of the way it is in the books, where Aunt Em does come to believe her, and Uncle Henry is the one who thinks Dorothy simply has vivid dreams.
- I viewed Oz as the temptation, and the image of her "eternal reward" as phony —- possibly generated by her own mind, possibly otherwise. The poem "Der Erlkönig" comes to mind.
"Professor Marvel", "Hunk", "Zeke", "Hickory", and "Miss Gulch" are a team of dream thieves who are trying to incept in her the idea that all your troubles will be easily avoided or resolved by surrounding herself with the comfortable and familiar.
By extension, the Munchkins are Dorothy's projections, and the Gatekeeper, Doorman, and the grandiose Wizard of Oz are manifestations of Professor Marvel's subconscious narcissism, which threaten the plan by trying to take over the story as the real villain. "Miss Gulch" therefore arranges to be a distraction while Marvel resolves his personal issues; by the time Dorothy and company return to the Emerald City, Marvel is back in control and managed to retcon Oz's original appearance into an intentional trick covering up an inferiority complex.
Because Dorothy isn't nearly as self-reflective as Fischer, only two levels of dreaming are needed; hence, the sedative is normal, there's no risk of Limbo ("Miss Gulch" is woken up when she melts), and there doesn't need to be a simultaneous kick in Oz to boot her back into Kansas. (The kick from Kansas is, of course, the house falling to the ground.)
- In real life, coroners are often doctors or lawyers. The coroner is actually a/the Munchkin doctor. There's no proof that the Munchkin village comprises the entire population of Munchkinland.
- Alternately, since in the film it appears that people can actually die, the coroner's job amounts to determining how dead somebody is. Somebody who's been rendered effectively helpless but still alive is not dead. Somebody who is helpless and unresponsive but capable of revival is "merely" dead. In the Witch's case with the house, she was "most sincerely dead", meaning dead forever and incapable of being brought back.
- Considering how some of Oz's inhabitants, like the Scarecrow and Tin Man, don't have any biological functions to speak of, determining what "death" even means for such individuals might pose quite a challenge for him in any case.
- Alternately, since in the film it appears that people can actually die, the coroner's job amounts to determining how dead somebody is. Somebody who's been rendered effectively helpless but still alive is not dead. Somebody who is helpless and unresponsive but capable of revival is "merely" dead. In the Witch's case with the house, she was "most sincerely dead", meaning dead forever and incapable of being brought back.
- The alleged "secret ending", according to many discussion boards including Snopes, allegedly shows the ruby slippers still on Dorothy's feet as she lies in bed. Another rumor dating from the late '40s has Dorothy saying "There's no place like home", and the camera pans down from her face to show the ruby slippers under the bed. Apparently these rumors are very convincing, to the point that people swear they saw it at least once, similar to the "I saw the baby!" claims made by people who saw Rosemary's Baby.
- The alleged secret ending shown once, sometime in the sixties, and it wasn't just a dream.
- The movie was first shown in 1939, so we have a three-decade gap between that and the supposed ending.
- Why would MGM have had another ending on tape but only used it once? If it wasn't theirs. My idea is that it was made by a TV network for that one viewing. The real ending would have still been shown. (Senshi Sun)
Along the way to the Emerald City, Dorothy gets lonely, so she brings a scarecrow and a statue made of tin to life to keep her company. And when a lion attacks them, she uses a spell to turn the great beast into a coward. And, when faced with the wrath of the Wicked Witch of the West, turns a bucket of water into a potion of dissolving in order to kill her. Again, all unintentionally. Under this theory, the silver/ruby shoes are just placebos like everyone else's gifts; Dorothy transported herself back to Kansas by her own power; she just needed Glinda to convince her she could.
- This theory actually makes some sense when it comes to the books, as she comes into possession of a magic belt that grants wishes, and uses magical artifacts with the same ease a native Ozian would. It would also fit with TinMan, where her granddaughter (the lavender-eyed Queen) and great-granddaughters (DG and Azkedellia) are shown to have some potent magic at their disposal.
- Plus, she misses the people she knew in Kansas so when she makes the scarecrow, tin statue and lion into her friends, she creates them to be like the hired men from her farm.
- Dorothy therefore, would be the Good Witch of the South, a literal Angel Unaware.
We see a total of four practitioners of magic in the movie. Glinda in the North, the Witches of the East and West, and the Wizard of Oz. If three of the four are assigned to a specific direction, it just stands to reason that the fourth is assigned to the remaining direction. The Emerald City must be somewhere in the South. Glinda doesn't seem to know that the wizard can't do real magic, she and the other witches have accepted his Sufficiently Advanced Technology as proof of his wizardry and appointed him the magician of the south.
- Or, the Wizard got his position by finding out the Wicked Witch of the South's Weaksauce Weakness and killing her. With a powerful 'magician' and an open position, Glinda decided to let the Wizard take the role of the Good Wizard of the South.
- That's certainly way more plausible than the "Oz water is made of houses" theory.
- Even as a kid I always thought it was real.
- Oz could be located on the Astral Plane, in which case Dorothy astrally projected there while she was unconscious—both real and a dream, as it were.
She decides to let Dorothy hang on to them in lieu of a better plan, and then runs off to do research and figure out what they do, while keeping an eye on her. By the time she realises that the slippers can help Dorothy get home, Dorothy has already killed the WWW and has just lost her alternative ride home with the Wizard. Cue Glinda.
See? There's no reason Glinda has to be secretly evil.
What happened to set her off? Dorothy's dog chases Miss Gulch's cat (a spinster's favourite companion) in Miss Gulch's own yard. Then, Toto bites Miss Gulch. Miss Gulch is legally in the right, and being a none-too-nice woman, decides to avenge herself and her cat. So she visits the Gales, and is completely immune to Dorothy's pleas. Right? Wrong!
Miss Gulch isn't cackling with glee. She's showing hard, cold, stubbornness. She's shocked when Aunt Em insults her. Later, when she's cycling home, she's not happy. It's more a look of grim determination. Her conscience's bothering her, but she's too stubborn to relent.
Miss Gulch left way before Dorothy. There's no reason to suggest she would have been fool enough to go out in the storm after she discovered Toto's escape. But she would have heard that Dorothy suffered a concussion and was knocked unconscious. That's enough to have her relent. Getting even with a biting dog is one thing. But to raise your hand against a girl who has very nearly died?
Either she sends a letter outright, wishing Dorothy well and saying that she didn't want Toto destroyed. Or, she pretends to forget about the matter entirely - and never again goes after the dog.
- Alternately, she's not dead. Instead, she moved away because her house was destroyed by the tornado. Her only bright side is no longer having to deal with Toto.
Well, Frank Morgan does play both Marvel and the Coachman.
She is an AA+ witch who physically damaged her harness after attempting to modify it. To an extent she was successful, as she no longer needs a pill every 30-35 hours and can use her magic to her heart's content. However, it altered her biology to give her green skin, and if she gets the harness's circuitry wet, it will malfunction and eject.
In the first scene, Dorothy is coming home from school. Miss Good is the local schoolmarm who runs a one room schoolhouse, meaning she teaches Dorothy American history while also teaching first graders their ABC's. It's a job that requires brains, a heart and courage. She's a kind teacher who encourages her students to learn things for themselves. At one point, Miss Gulch tried to interrupt Miss Good's class to scold Dorothy over something Toto did. Miss Good told Miss Gulch that she had no power in her classroom and should be off immediately. Even Miss Gulch knows not to tangle with Miss Good.
- Brilliant, I love it! Glinda definitely needed a counterpart.
It seems rather odd that the Witch of the West would happen to be flying around the very tornado that was about to kill her sister, and yet did nothing to prevent it (unless of course she wanted her dead so she could get the slippers, and letting the house fall on her was the only safe way she had to get rid of her...). Anyway, so barring that, the explanation for what Dorothy saw, of course, is that the Witches of the East and West were twin sisters. Miss Gulch became her because Dorothy's mind made the connection in appearance and the Witch of the East happened to be the one her house encountered first (and we never saw her feet so she could well have been wearing striped socks—plus Kansas and Oz clothes didn't correlate anyway). So it was because the Witch of the East was flying in/near the tornado when it came to Oz that she was in the right place to get crushed by the house. This would also explain why the Munchkins (who presumably had never seen the Witch of the West before) would be so frightened of her, since she looked just like the tyrant whose death they'd just been celebrating.
- Strongly supported by the lyrics: "Just then, the Witch, to satisfy an itch, went flying on her broomstick, thumbing for a hitch—and oh, what happened then was rich!"
- Hence her green skin and big hooked nose.
- Oz is at a "higher level of reality," as theorized by Timothy Leary, and Dorothy is there in a lucid dream from a very precise head injury. The Oz characters look like people she knows not because they're part of the dream, but because each of them is the Higher Truth or Realer Self of that Kansan. This is what kills Miss Gulch — the Witch is Gulch's shriveled soul, and destroying it destroys her. (This is true of Toto, too. It's the hyper-real Toto that accompanies her in Oz while the real Toto remains on Earth. A domesticated dog is enough of a person to have a soul, and a dog is honest about itself so its soul and body look the same.) Yes, this does mean one could perform very efficient assassinations by traveling to Oz and murdering the Ozite corresponding to your target. Perhaps this is what Professor Marvel is working on; if he's a government agent it would explain both his behavior, oddly responsible and compassionate for a criminal, and the prominence of his soul-self in Oz.
- This is also suggested under Alternate Character Interpretation on the movie's YMMV page. The Witch is associated with fire throughout the movie. She appears and disappears in bursts of smoke or flames, and she writes "Surrender Dorothy" in words of smoke in the sky. It's only natural that a creature of fire like she is should be destroyed by water, just like fire itself.
- If Oz is All Just a Dream, then this would explain the Wicked Witch's fire powers. Dorothy was probably very little when it happened and may or may not remember it, but regardless, her parents' deaths have left her with a fear of fire, which is why fire is associated both with the Witch and with the Wizard's frightening giant head form in her dream.