Dark Side of Oz
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"!
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"!