tehcnicolor dreamworld

Television: A Technicolor Dreamworld
The narrative structure of The Wizard of Oz starts out with the main character, Dorothy. Her house has been blown into a mythical world full of witches and munchkins. A good witch tells her that she must find the Wizard to take her and her little dog back to Kansas. All she has to do is follow the yellow brick road straight to the land of Oz. Along the way Dorothy makes a few friends, who are in need of something. She meets a scarecrow who needs a brain, a tin man who needs a heart and a lion who needs some courage. They run into some trouble when they encounter a wicked witch who is angry at Dorothy because her house landed on her sister, another wicked witch. They get captured and are taken to her castle. With Toto’s help they escape and kill the wicked witch. They make it to Oz and find that the Wizard is a lonely old man with little power at all. He is wise though and helps each of them by giving meaningful gifts. Lastly, he invites Dorothy to go home with him in a big air balloon, but she gets out when Toto runs away, ruining her chances of ever getting home. But miraculously the good witch comes back and tells her to click her heels three times if she ever wanted to go home. She does and wakes up back in Kansas, to find out that it was all just a dream. Many stories about people overcoming obstacles do in fact fit in the shape of the narrative of this story. The “yellow brick road” symbolizes certain inevitability for Dorothy. Her ultimate good nature and kind feeling towards everyone she meets leads her down a certain path and certainly she will find her way home. This seems to be the central moral of the story. If people are good hearted, friendly and polite enough they will find their way home. I do think that this narrative is a bit simplified though in comparison to real life biographies. Realistically, the yellow brick road is not always so plain and obvious. In Oz, you know you are on the road and you know that this road will lead to, in Dorothy and company’s case, the resolution to your problems. In life decisions made are not always the right ones even if we all are kind natured and friendly.
I think there might be a subliminal undercurrent of shedding a favorable light on watching television in The Wizard of Oz. As a metaphor, “somewhere over the rainbow” certainly could represent imagination as a way of escaping reality. And just as one can go there in an instant, one can come right back from it. This is the wonder of television. It creates a substitute, for a while, from the cruel, dull, grind that is our existence. In most cases the world we see in the TV is brighter than the black and white of reality. When we turn on the TV we are immersed in a world where problems are solved after commercial break. Thirty minutes is all someone needs to create, struggle with and solve the problems they are faced with. We are happy in this Technicolor world. This is what TV stands for in our every day lives and this is what The Wizard of Oz stands to represent and tell about this type of technology’s place in our culture.