{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3675",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3675,
    "subject": "FLF: parallels to Oz",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-12-15T22:01:00+00:00",
    "last": "2002-12-15T22:01:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0212-2424@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-12-15T22:01:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) FLF: parallels to Oz",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "William Ansley wrote:\nAs I have said many times before, I have always found the Oz\nparallels in FLF to be rather superficial. Sure there are some\nreferences to the movie, but I have found all attempts to draw deeper\nparallels to be strained at best. Especially since Wolfe demonstrated\njust how thoroughly he could incorporate Oz lore in one of his\nstories in \"The Eyeflash Miracles.\"\n\nAnyway, you are thinking of General Jinjur's Army of Revolt (\"We are\nrevolting!\" \"You don't look it.\") in _The Marvelous Land of Oz_ by L.\nFrank Baum. In this book the Emerald City is conquered by an army of\ngirls (that is, young women). They are assured of victory because, as\nJinjur says, \"What man would oppose a girl, or dare to harm her? And\nthere is not an ugly face in my entire Army.\" And, just in case, they\nall have sharp knitting needles thrust in their hair, which they use\nto great effect as weapons.\n\nThese girls are from all four parts of the land of Oz, but Baum\nmentions this mainly, it seems, as as excuse to describe their\ncostumes in great detail. They wear green blouses and skirts that are\none quarter blue, yellow, red and purple. They also have four buttons\non their blouse of the same colors. The color of the front section of\nthe skirt and of the topmost button indicate which part of Oz the\nwearer comes from.\n\n(Baum may have been satirizing the women's suffrage movement; it is\nhard to be sure.)\n\nI don't think my information contradicts your theory, but it may\nweaken it, since the most important characteristic of the Army of\nRevolt was that it was made up of girls, not that it was a coalition\nfrom all \"four corners\" of the land of Oz."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I will agree that from an Oz-book perspective it is pretty superficial, but\nthe obverse, from the Oz-movie(s) perspective of 1980s American society at\nlarge, I continue to think that it is somewhat deeper.\n\nPeople who only know Oz from the musical (i.e., the mass of the American\npublic) would find the notion of the Emerald City under siege to be alien,\nor even a juvenile parody of a classic.  Yet it actually happens in book 2,\nas I alluded and you named, and it seems to happen in THE EMERALD CITY OF\nOZ (perhaps even in THE MAGIC OF OZ), judging by the blurbs . . . and these\nare only the Baum books.\n\nFor it to be a closer imitation of THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ, the defenders\nof the Free house would have to be the four characters and the aggressors\nwould have to be a horde of girl scouts.  Even a simple reversal would mean\nthat the defenders would be girl scouts blocking access to the condemned\nhouse.  Since none of the FLF-characters would logically have access to 100\nrapid-deployment girl scouts, such a tale would require a different\ncharacter who did have such.\n\nIn a sense, even while Baum is poking fun at the suffragettes, he is\nanticipating the military genius of Gandhi in using noncombatants to\nachieve military goals without using death or terror.  The use of\nbusinessmen as unwitting defenders in FLF strikes me as being quite similar.\n\nLarge scale battles in Oz, in my limited reading, seem to often (always?)\nhave comedic elements.  Again this fits in with the screwball comedy siege\nin FLF.\n\nThere is also the matter of the differences between movies and books.  The\nmovie is famous for its \"it was all a dream\" aspect, where the characters\nin real Kansas were mapped out onto characters in Oz; but this is\npractically anathema to the Oz books (Oz is a real place, not a dream\nplace; etc.).  The movie makes a big play out of how the favorite treasures\neach companion received from the Wizard was really nothing -- that each had\npossessed the brains, heart, and courage that he wanted all along; again,\nthis is at strong variance with the Oz books and the Oz world, if not\nanathematic (the treasures are real, even as they are funny to author and\nthe readers, they are still real to the recipients and the world they live\nin--iirc, Glinda never says \"you had it all along\" except for the very\ndifferent case of Dorothy's silver shoes, with which she could have\nreturned to Kansas on the first day, but then it is quickly noted that such\nan action would have deprived her (then future) companions of their dreams\nbeing answered).\n\nBaum did not live to see the musical made, so he never had to (or had the\nopportunity to) write Oz books that bridged the gaps between books and\nmovie.  (In the way that Jeter has written sequels to the movie\n\"Bladerunner\" which grapple with the gaps between that movie and its\ninspiration DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?)  FREE LIVE FREE, which is\nmainly couched in Oz-terms via the movie, takes on both of these major\nvariants (\"dream\" and \"you had it all along\") and puts them through a\nprocess which I think re-Ozifies them.\n\nIn FLF, the \"dream\" was not a dream, but an imploded timeline (Oz is not a\ndream place).  In FLF, \"you had it all along\" is true, in a sense, but tied\nup in the action of the quest (the \"doing\") and the folding into a previous\nself (the melding of one's present self into a past self, which produces an\nalloyed self as well as a \"dream\").\n\nGranted all this, I still hope that my interpretation can aspire to the\nlofty ranks of \"strained,\" but I recognize this is only wishful thinking.\nSo we will just file it under \"Opinion\" and move on.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}