WHY are the shoes SILVER??- Page 2

[aspiringactress]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 10:47am

The reason why the original shoes are silver is that the author of the books openly made political statements that USA currency should be based on silver. MGM didn't want the political connotations when they released the movie, so they were changed to ruby.

[jasobres]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 10:57am

Once again, that is a myth and a load of BS.

[aspiringactress]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 11:20am

jasobres, I am interested in researching your prespective as to Baum's political beliefs and his employment of satire and allegory in his novels. Do you have any links or book reccomendations. All of the research I have done on this topic points to tthe fact that after leaving his life in South Dakota he became extremely politicaly active in that he attended many marches for William reatJennings Byram. One of this mans political slogans was "free coinage of silver", and it was the main item on his agenda to add silver to the USA's gold standard. I have always been an extremely avid Baum reader, and as I've grown older I have extensively researched his life as well as his writing. I would greatley apreciate if you could reccomend any texts containing substantial evidence against the Populist allegory theory.

[jasobres]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 11:24am

All that I know is that Baum got the name "Oz" from his file cabinets, not from the abbreviation for ounces. The top file was labeled "A-N" and the bottom was labeled "O-Z."

[aspiringactress]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 11:27am

I knew thatpart already, but lately I have been specifically researching the shoes, and the more I look into Baum's political history, and the more I analyze textual evidence, it becomes clearer that the allegory is there.

[sweetestsiren]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 11:30am

Yeah, I've never heard the Populist allegory idea disproven, either. It seems to match up too well not to reference the political state of the nation at that time.

Also, I believe I've heard that the Wicked Witches of the East and West were drought (West) and something else that was plaguing the poorer classes in the Eastern part of the country (I can't remember what, exactly). Dorothy from Kansas, who is representative of the poor western farmer, finds herself matched up against the Wicked Witch of the West. Is there truth to this part, or is it a stretch?

Edit: Okay, after further research it all seems more speculative/dubious, but who knows if the political climate of the time inspired some of the events or characters. Updated On: 1/9/06 at 11:30 AM

[aspiringactress]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 11:37am

I have also heard those theories. They seem to make sense, especially considering the fact that Baum had returned from South Dakota, where he found benign nature to be disproved, and everyone he came in contact with was a poor farmer who was rioting for monatary reasons. Currently, I can't seem to find what the wicked witch of the East represented, but it would be moer trivial considering that after Dorothy's arrival wicked only rules the west.

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 11:55am

If Wicked, the book, is based solely on FLB's book, why is Elphaba's skin green in McGuire's book? I wasn't aware that WWotW's skin was not green in the original.

[Kringas]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 12:11pm

Maguire snatches more than a few things from the movie - Elphaba's green skin, the fact that there are only three witches (there are four in the book) ... I think I remembered more at one time, but I'm only on my first cup of coffee today.

Updated On: 1/9/06 at 12:11 PM

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 12:21pm

I am actually the 4th witch. Trashy Witch from the South.

[Kringas]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 12:24pm

Idina had you cut in previews, didn't she?

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 12:27pm

Yep. I was getting more attention than either witch. Kristin and Idina had me booted. Michelle could care less. She was just staring at Norbert.

[d5johnston]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 12:46pm

If anyone can find the old TV movie entitled "The Dreamer of Oz," it describes how L. Frank Baum came to create the Wizard of Oz in painstaking detail. It's a pretty good film if memory serves. It starred the late John Ritter as Baum and our own Morrible Rue McClanahan as his mother-in-law, whom the film implies was his inspiration for the Wicked Witch of the West.

[arykahmarye]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 2:20pm

In my AP US History class, our teacher actually discussed the allegory in The Wizard of OZ for the Populist movement, as well as other key issues at the time in American history. I remember writing a couple things down (i usually slept in that class, but the mention of Oz woke me up).

According to the ever-right-and-rightoeous Mr. Smith, the Wicked Witch of the West was a symbol of the western wilderness the United States was trying to conquer and control, the Wicked Witch of the East being the same, but the house dropped on her symbolized the fact man had already conquered out East. Since the Western wilderness with it's moutains and Indians were the farmers enemy, the government would rather blame that as the ecomonic problem than confront a suggestion like a silver standard.
The silver shoes were supposed to represent the silver standard farmers were trying to push (since it in such abundance after silver mines in the Nevada/Idaho area had been uncovered), traveling the gold standard/yellow brick road to the Emerald City/Washington DC, a glorified capital city, disguised in colour to fool citizens into thinking everyone was good.
All i remember of Dorothy's traveling companions was that the Scarecrow was supposed to represent the impoverished farmers, trying to get the gold standard to Washington.

It's been a while since that class. L'anyhoodle, a lot of the ideas in Wicked, the novel, seem to support this sort of interpretation of the events in Oz.

Oh, and for the record, in the novel of Wicked, it says about the shoes:
"From a pile of ash shavings she withdrew a shoe, and then another. Were they silver?--or blue?--or now red?--lacquered with a candy shell brilliance of polish? It was hard to tell and it didn't matter; the effect was dazzling...the surface of the shoes seemed to pulse with hundreds of reflections and refractions. In the firelight, it was like looking at the boiling corpuscles of blood under a magnifying glass."

It seems Gregory Maguire tried to combine all the incarnations of the shoes into one.

[OddExoticCreature]

Posted: 1/9/06 at 3:34pm

"Yep. I was getting more attention than either witch. Kristin and Idina had me booted. Michelle could care less. She was just staring at Norbert." HAHAHAHA

and Norbert was sitting reading the novel thinking, "wait a minute, my character has brown skin, and if they're painting Idina..."