Monday, October 15, 2012

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

     The gram I chose in this movie, was the giant wheel on which Dorothy leans upon when she sings Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It appears relatively early on in the film, and the song she sings seems to spark the fire for Dorothy's quest in the show. In this number, Dorothy is revealed as a character who is not happy where she is and dreams of a better place to call home.  This spurs her running away a few scenes later. However, shortly after talking to a 'fortune teller' who tells her that her Aunt Em has a broken heart, she decides to return home, and spends the rest of the movie trying to go home.
     I feel like Dorothy's quest is well represented in this wheel, because a wheel is circular and, when moving, continues to rotate around and around - continuous.  The other similar wheels I saw throughout the film were on a carriage in Munchkin Land, and on the multi-colored horses' carriage in the Emerald City.  Each time these wheels were shown, they were all in motion.  However, the wheel Dorothy leaned upon was much completely stationary; not to mention shown in black and white while the others were in color.  This could be translated to the idea that Dorothy's personal wheel is stationary because she feels stuck and is dreaming of a better place somewhere over the rainbow, and the other wheels are in motion in the land of Oz because they are in a foreign place, quite over the rainbow indeed.
     In relation to the mobius strip, I feel like my gram ties in quite nicely as well as the main characters quest to return home.  The mobius strip has a constant, forward motion that never lets you stop propelling on its path.  This is much like a wheel; the very wheels seen in the land of Oz.  These wheels gave the story a constant feeling of forward motion and confusion from Dorothy's perspective concerning how she would ever return home, which gave the viewer the same sense.  And even when Dorothy does return to Kansas at the end of the film, she awakens with a personal satisfaction and longing to be right where she is, and her personal wheel has been set in motion with enthusiasm and content to stay right where she is.


2 comments:

  1. Yeah, the wheel does make a natural referent to the structure of the Mobius strip--and the contrast you're pointing to between stasis and motion is potentially useful.... One of the paradoxes the Mobius strip helps us track is the accompanying of a given rotation or cycle by a certain remainder (like when we make a pun based on two usages of a word and the pun produces a surplus unspoken meaning). Given that the whole point of the Concrete Universal concerns the centrality of this paradox to identity as such, the wheel (in both its versions, still and moving) reflect Dorothy's imbuing of her own scene with this life-giving surplus space. (You gotta have a little distance from yourself--and it's interesting to see this structure ascribed to a woman in a film released just after the first viable arguments had been made in the US for the presence of women in the world of commerce and politics--a.k.a. Oz versus Kansas.)

    100/100

    CS

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  2. The interesting thing about the contrast between the wheels (static versus motion) is that the Mobius strip involves the production of a certain surplus with each rotation--like when you make a pun from two meanings of the same word and reveal the first of the two meanings to actually include an unspoken connotation. This surplus in relation to one's own social coordinates is crucial to life (or to a viable identity, at any rate)--and it's significant to see this structure ascribed to a young woman in a film released in 1939 (shortly after the argument had been made by feminists that the best way for a woman to be a good member of the family (Kansas) was to be active in the civic sphere (Oz, with its armies, leaders, boundaries, etc.).

    100/100

    CS

    ReplyDelete