Oz the Great and Powerful Reminds Us of the Worst Oz Has to Offer

By paying attention to the man behind the curtain and the “land” in the “Land of Oz,” we can follow the yellow brick road through three layers of encroachment being resisted in our displeasure with the film. First, there is the manufactured consent within the narrative itself. Further down the road, we encounter the dark forest of Disney, branding the public domain. And before we see any shining Emerald City upon a hill, we’ll have to contend with Baum’s support for Native extermination that shapes the bedrock of his stories.

Oz the Great and Powerful is a veritable poppy field of sleepy storytelling that prefers to tell rather than show. But there are two particular instances in which screenwriters Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire pull some sleight of hand to trick both the audience and citizens of Oz. The first is Glinda’s Goodness Bubble. As Oz (James Franco) and Glinda (Michelle Williams) whirl through the air toward Glinda’s realm, they approach the magic barrier to her realm, which will only let “the pure of heart” pass through. By that point, we’ve seen Oz con, lie, deceive and squirm his way out of every situation. He’s shown compassion towards the broken China Doll (voiced by Joey King), but even then, he lies to her about having magic powers and potions. So though we’ve had glimmers of goodness, we’ve seen nothing that would guarantee Oz will pass the test. Yet he does. Though Kapner and Lindsay-Abaire have shown us little, they use the barrier as a quick and lazy way to show that Oz is “good, actually” Instead of letting us and the citizens of Oz decide for ourselves if our leader is worthy, we have his morality, goodness and leadership thrust upon us.

That’s not the only time the citizens of Oz are duped. After Oz and Glinda pull off his climactic charade to convince the Wicked Witches Evanora (Rachel Weisz) and Theodora (Mila Kunis) of his supreme powers, they happily let the citizens believe the con. The film wraps up in what is supposed to be a grandiose gesture of “what they don’t know won’t hurt them,” which is far too neat. “Make them believe, and you’re wizard enough…these are desperate times, after all,” Glinda coos in Oz’s ear. When Dorothy and Toto arrive in Oz, no one knows the wizard is a fraud. If this prequel is to set the stage for the rest of the story we know, then Glinda’s advice that Dorothy seek out The Wizard makes her an accomplice to more dishonesty. And what’s worse, it renders the citizens of Oz and, by extension, the audience, stupefied and powerless, grateful to be conned, thus stripping Oz of any semblance of democracy. 

Shared participation is what makes worlds like Oz so enjoyable. As part of the public domain, anyone can use the Baum books to create art without fear of legal recourse. But when significant studios come in, and brands work in the creative commons, they enclose parts of the world from us. Like it has done with fairy tales since its beginning, The Walt Disney Company has a pattern of using free-use source texts, changing the way the public knows and experiences those tales, and then locking them down behind a paywall. It becomes more difficult for us to enter Oz ourselves, with new landmines of possible litigation laid down. We not only have to avoid ruby slippers, but also certain shades of green. Studios own the designs for their Emerald Cities and The Dark Forest. Stromberg explains that he rooted his concept art for Oz in early Disney films and was determined to make the world feel as covered in pixie dust as possible. 

If the world wasn’t Disneyfied enough, the script sure is. On top of using an apple to poison Theodora and turn her green, the prose is so purple it feels bruised. The joy and accessibility of Baum’s Oz novels and the 1939 classic come from being written in a common register. In Oz the Great and Powerful, the characters talk in a dialect of faux fantasies. Every sentence is a childish decree so lofty they scare the winged monkeys in the attack. But the worst offense is the trite prophecy built into the world that proclaims Oz’s rightful ownership of the land that bears his name.

Whether intentionally or not, Oz’s destiny being written into the story of Oz the Great and Powerful mirrors Baum’s own violent beliefs about the land and those fittest to rule. While working as a journalist in South Dakota, Baum heard about the Wounded Knee massacre and doubled down hard on his anti-Indigenous racism. He called for the total eradication of Native peoples as parasites, unfit to improve the land. Like The Walt Disney Company believed they should be the ones to make a stamp on the public domain, Baum thought white people were the only true custodians of America. It’s not a coincidence that his magical world, written a few years later, would start with a sudden arrival of a pure outsider to an already inhabited land whose citizens dutifully and obsequiously bend to their leadership.

Today, Oz the Great and Powerful boasts collective and equal distaste among audiences and critics alike, which suggests that there’s something to be resisted within the film. To me, it’s the further partitioning of the public domain by corporations and maintaining of racist ideology further into that creative commons. What we’re rejecting most is the belief that any character, corporation or colonial power has the right to enclose space for itself. Manifest Destiny, in all its forms, is lazy writing and insufficient thought. Our displeasure shows that easy tricks will not sway us. By continuing to prevent Oz the Great and Powerful from being resuscitated, we’re executing what little sovereignty we have over the public domain and the creative worlds we collectively share.

B.L. Panther is a culture writer, scholar and Pisces from Northern Illinois. B! writes for outlets such as Honey Literary Journal and The Spool, where they’re also the cohost of The Meh-thod Podcast discussing great actors in less-than-great films. A champion hermit, they enjoy reading, the indoors, afternoon naps and doing nothing at all.