There's no place like...Oz?

I was impressed but not entirely surprised by the depth Salman Rushdie derived from his reading of The Wizard of Oz considering he is an important literary figure but not, by narrow definition, a film scholar. His extremely eloquent reading of the film lends itself beautifully to the argument for cinema's catagorization as not only an art form but a legitimate academic text. As Rushdie's recollections of his youth can attest, Oz seems universally embeded in our collective childhood memory; the degree of its influence may vary (I for one, can still very vividly recall nightmares of those flying monkeys) but always includes a regaurd for the film's moral mantra, "there's no place like home" as undeniable fact. It is the inexplicable integration of Oz's moral into both the foundations of our youth and the cannon of classic Hollywood lines that makes Rushdie's argument for the film's underlying "anarchic spirit" all the more compelling. I had never stopped to question the shortcomings of the "home" Dorothy wants so deperately to reach- yet Rushdie's awareness of the black and white Kansas (where both little dogs and little girls are mistreated) and its residents not only undermines one of the great parables of Hollywood cinema but simultaneously transforms a work of technicolor song and dance numbers into something even more universally understood by (former) children- rooted not in the simplicity of fantasy but in the universal reality of "the inadequacy of adults, even good adults. and how the weakness of grown-ups forces children to take control of their own destinies, and so, ironically, grow up themselves." (Rushdie, 10)