Dark Side of Oz

[ivyfic]

I just watched "The Wizard of Oz" while listening to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" (if you don't know what this is, google it, there are a billion fan sites). This is cool at first, but somewhere around the forty-five minute mark, when the album first repeats, your eyes sort of glaze over and you start thinking about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Or, in my case, 1930's pop culture, the role of the immature and ineffectual adult in children's literature, and how very gay the cowardly lion is.

Then all of a sudden, it hit me:

Dorothy is a Mary Sue.

Think about it - she lands in a new world and within five minutes is surrounded by an adoring crowd that loves her immediately and showers her with gifts. The only attributes she seems to have are being beautiful and sweet and crying in the face of adversity. But, of course, when she cries even the hardest heart takes pity on her. All of the people in Oz immediately love her, except for the Wicked Witch, who immediately despises her over all others. She, though she's an outsider, becomes the absolute center of the universe. She even reduces the rest of the cast to tears when she leaves Oz at the end. If you put Dorothy through the Mary Sue litmus test, she would fail. And the amount of screen time spent on people kneeling before her, primping her, complimenting her, comforting her - ugh! I knew there was a reason I always hated "The Wizard of Oz"!

Comments

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

I think the fact that it ends up all being a dream negates a lot of the Mary Sue problem...do you honestly have that many dreams where you're not the center of attention?

Of course, any subsequent use of dream sequences to negate Mary Sue-ism is just a bad rip-off :)

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

That may be, but that doesn't make me actually want to watch it.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I hate the Wizard of Oz, too. However, can we call her a Mary Sue? I mean, I know that article you linked to said that stories where there were the defining characteristics of a Mary Sue could be original, but how else could we have experienced Oz? Dorothy had to learn a few things, too. She had to appreciate that she was lucky to have her Aunt and Uncle and not be such a spoiled brat. Running away was a bad mistake, etc.

But really, for stories where there's a miraculous other-world setup, you almost always run into Mary Sue-ish main characters because the point is not to tell a story but to enjoy the world put out there. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a bit of a Marty-Sue centric story, seeing as Charlier is this poor, fatherless waif who through behaving and not breaking major rules comes to inherit Willy Wonka's fortune. The Matrix is another Marty Sue--Neo gets to try out all the whiz-bang powers and, ta-da! He does nothing special but gets to be the most specialist of pluggies.

And as much as it pains me, Luke Skywalker's a Mary Sue, too. Also an orphan, poor, living in a harsh environment, suddenly well-endowed with the Force...

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Well-endowed, huh...

[sine-que-non767.livejournal.com]

Great theory, and I heartily subscribe! The Wizard of Oz is just the epitome of everything sickly-sweet American that makes me reach for the sickbag - with the exception of the cowardly lion, who is gayer than gay and who I want to rescue in a crossover of some kind. Someday...