Monday, September 7, 2009

The Wizard of OZ --Salman Rushdie

I found Rushdie's explanation of the Wizard of OZ to be very insightful into the background of the filming of the Wizard of OZ. As a child the movie was one of my favorites but I never looked at it in any kind of serious way. I found it fascinating to read his explanation of how the film influenced him, and despite the flaws he knew about it was still able to take away a lot of good. When he explained how Kansas was shown in the many different shades of grey in contrast to Toto who is black, and then later to OZ in full fledged color, I found it interesting to learn that the original text meant for Kansas in the story to be even more dreary and really in the middle of nowhere. I also took note of how he described the basic geometric shapes of Kansas in contrast to the spirals and twists and turns found in OZ, making this imaginary place more exciting to the viewer.
Learning more of the history of the relationships of the actors and what actually happened on set makes the movie, as he says, a little harder to enjoy, because you want to believe that there is a place that people can be happy away from home. The way the colors are used draw the audience into the world of OZ was one of the main things I noticed in the film and Rushdie explains how the new use of color on screen would have been even more exciting to a generation for whom this was something new.

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