The Bleakness of Reality; the Vividness of Imagination
Few moments in movie history before or since The Wizard of Oz have managed to distill the leap made from one type of reality to its complete opposite so efficiently and powerfully as that moment when Dorothy opens the door inside the farmhouse; she instantly travels across not just time and space, but the limits of the imagination with the revelation of a bright world on the other side of the door so vividly colored it almost hurts to look. Kubrick managed to get close with the passage of millions of years in the blink of time it takes for a bone throw into the air by a prehistoric ape into a spaceship. But that leap was all done optically inside the camera. Keep in mind that when Dorothy actually opens the door she is still sepia-toned but upon immediately exiting through the doors her Gingham outfit is revealed as a deep shade of powder blue perfectly at home among all the other hues and shades surrounding her. The distinction between the bleakness of Depression-era Kansas and the seemingly unlimited possibilities of Oz is conveyed solely through visual means that leaves no room for doubt.
The Red Shoes
Female empowerment is situated with the ruby red slippers as the ultimate image of transactional femininity. The shoes clearly have magical powers and since they man would ever be seen wearing them, that power is gift to the female. The Witch of the West obsesses after them, Glinda has the power to give them to Dorothy under terms that make it very difficult for the green girl to simply take them and Dorothy is capable of using them to return home. And meanwhile, the supposedly Great and Power male ruler of Oz remains oblivious to that power having apparently decided that the power of witches resides entirely within their broomsticks
War Imagery
Oz may be bright and beautiful and dazzling in its colorful opposition to Kansas, but from the second Dorothy steps into that world through the doors of the Kansas farmhouse, she become a game-changing addition to a war raging between the forces of wickedness and the forces of ignorant belief in the Wizard. Dorothy at first seems to be merely a pawn in this war being carefully draw deeper into the drawing board by a Glinda who may be on the side of good, but may also be more cunning that she lets on. Glinda, after all, is the agent that puts the slippers on Dorothy’s feet. This sets in motion a chain of events that leads to showdown of sorts between the Wicked Witch’s “army of flying monkeys” and the cabal sent to steal her broomstick on orders of the Wizard. Is the seemingly benign Glinda the real brilliant military strategist behind the deposing of the phony wizard and the assassination of the Wicked Witch? The imagery that becomes increasingly more martial as the film wears on suggest that she is.
Intellectualizing the Natural World
Of course, it is important to understand that the distinction between the black and white world of Kansas and the array of colors in Oz that act as a counterpoint is a parallel that works only for the viewer The flat prairies of Kansas may lack the opportunities to display the vibrancy of colors found in Oz, but it is not intended to be viewed actually a world without color Nevertheless the vocabulary of Oz indicates that its inhabitants are aware of just how strikingly colorful their homeland is. They have intellectualized what occurs naturally all around them to make it a part of syntax of their culture. This is a place that has witches with green skin and roads referred to by the color of its bricks. The center of industry is the Emerald City where visitors can marvel at their horse of another color constantly refining the hue of its hide. And, of course, Dorothy’s arrival culminates in the end to the tyranny and fear of the green witches directly as a result of the magical powers situated in the ruby red slippers. This constant reference to colors by name is not merely imagery related to the narrative, of course. Those references were put there to convince audience members of the viability of color as the future of film and to educate them on the inevitable intellectual mandate that that one day black and white movies had to would go the way of silent film.
