The Wonderful Wizard of Oz<\/a>, Dorothy lands a house on the Wicked Witch of the East, thus freeing the Munchkins from bondage? Right? What evidence is presented to us of that tyranny?\nThe whole description of Munchkinland is of “fields of grain and vegetables in abundance.” Dorothy has dinner with Boq, “one of the richest Munchkins in the land”, and he and his friends show no signs of having been collaborators, or fearing the loss of the privilege they held under the now-toppled Witchocracy. Further away from the capital, things aren’t so nice; road maintainance is badly neglected, and the farms are neglected, and the animal control problems are pretty severe. On the whole, though, it’s hard to blame that on the Witch.\n
In the movie, it’s even more obvious that there is some sort of governmental infrastructure, with a mayor, and various Guilds and Leagues (and the children’s imitations thereof), all of which show either that the Witch’s control was pretty loose, or that the area is in dire need of some sort of Dewitchification process, to ensure that the bondage isn’t carried on. But here, as well, there’s a sense of prosperity, order, and social comfort that seems incompatible with the implied horrors of the Witch’s rule. And, I should point out, it’s not that either Baum or Fleming (or Harburg) appear to think that even a benevolent dictatorship is something to be loathed, as they scarcely blink at the transfer of the tyranny of Oz from the Humbug Wizard to the Bra[i]n-filled Scarecrow.\n
I’m not saying that the Witch of the East wasn’t Wicked: her actions in the Tin Woodman matter showed both venality and a sort of sadistic creativity worthy of Haman. But her death is clearly presented not as punishment for her Wickedosity, but as a liberation for the poor enslaved Munchkins. And I just don’t see it. Anyone?\n
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OK, Gentle Readers, you know how, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy lands a house on the Wicked Witch of the East, thus freeing the Munchkins from bondage? Right? What evidence is presented to us of that tyranny? The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17352,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2736\/revisions\/17352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}