Various Interpretations of Oz

by Aisha Gilani

Home > Various Interpretations of Oz

Baum's most famous work has been described as a "modernized fairy tale," and it lives up to its genre designation according to Arthur Asa Berger, a professor at San Francisco State University. In his book, "Narratives in Popular Culture, Media, and Everyday Life," there is a section on various "theorists of narrativity," where one of the theorists, Vladimir Propp believes that the sequence of events found in folktales and fairy tales For a very few examples, characters tend to be simplistic and eccentric, tests of ability are issued and surmounted, strange and mysterious lands are traversed, and kindness is rewarded while meanness is punished. The fairy tale's necessary scarcity of complexity fills it with a myth-like quality, openness to the discovery or investment of many relevance and meanings. As with all myth, the specific relevance and meaning may change with the cultural context.

Lawrence Grossberg argues that the author's meaning is not the meaning of a text; there is no one meaning of a text. However, it does not follow that just any interpretation of a text is valid. Most of the time, when people reflect on their interpretation of a text, they focus either on the themes or on the symbols that are most obvious in the text. The same signs may mean different things to adults and child viewers. As mentioned above, the relevance and meaning changes with the cultural context, which is exactly what Berger's theory about semiotics explains. A sign is divided into signified which is the physical representation and the signifier which is culturally bound. This theory can be proven right if we look at Salman Rushdie's interpretation of Wizard of Oz for example. He is a critic and taking into consideration all his previous publications, one should not be surprised at the negative perspective taken by him. Every human being will look at a text from a different perspective and this perspective is mostly culturally bound.

Some of the information that follows is the result of certain individual's scholarly research, while some of it is nothing more than just plain, old "opinion". The various interpretations have been divided into two sections. Some interpretations have been influenced by the book and some by the movie:

 

By Movie	By Book
Henry Littlefield's Parable on Populism	David Parker's Theosophical Allegory
American Archetypes
Oscar Gandy's Analogy
Salman Rushdie's Interpretation

Home | About Baum | Different Forms of Oz | Various Interpretations of Oz | References