Oz and the Emerald City
Jul. 23rd, 2025 03:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mnemeApropos of Hugo Voters having access to Wicked (that is going away tomorrow as Hugo Voting ends), we've started watching it and will finish up later tomorrow.
And I'm reminded that no dramatized version, as far as I know, has -ever- kept the key detail from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (the book) that The Emerald City is not green. At least, not during the first book; I've only read 3 of the first six books and none of the rest, so it's entirely possible that this is fixed eventually, particularly once Ozma is in charge.
To my memory, this is never made explicit in the novel. But it's not (the outer walls and the tops of towers are probably green. But the rest of the city? NAH!). This marvelous illusion, so thematic with the Wizard's (not actually a wizard) rule, is made possible by the rule that anyone who enters the Emerald City must have green-glassed goggles LOCKED ONTO THEIR HEAD. (Purportedly, this is to protect them from the blazing GREEN of everything in the city.) So, of -course- everything they look at while in the city is green, because they're wearing green sunglasses.
This is the kind of detail that the book can brush over, because if you know, you know -- but it's shocking that nobody (that I know of) has worked in how humbugged this is, and even doubled down on it by playing up the Green and Green and Green Glasses of it early in the show and then had the glasses come off and the true color of -everything- be revealed once Wizard=humbug comes out.
And I'm reminded that no dramatized version, as far as I know, has -ever- kept the key detail from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (the book) that The Emerald City is not green. At least, not during the first book; I've only read 3 of the first six books and none of the rest, so it's entirely possible that this is fixed eventually, particularly once Ozma is in charge.
To my memory, this is never made explicit in the novel. But it's not (the outer walls and the tops of towers are probably green. But the rest of the city? NAH!). This marvelous illusion, so thematic with the Wizard's (not actually a wizard) rule, is made possible by the rule that anyone who enters the Emerald City must have green-glassed goggles LOCKED ONTO THEIR HEAD. (Purportedly, this is to protect them from the blazing GREEN of everything in the city.) So, of -course- everything they look at while in the city is green, because they're wearing green sunglasses.
This is the kind of detail that the book can brush over, because if you know, you know -- but it's shocking that nobody (that I know of) has worked in how humbugged this is, and even doubled down on it by playing up the Green and Green and Green Glasses of it early in the show and then had the glasses come off and the true color of -everything- be revealed once Wizard=humbug comes out.
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Date: 2025-07-23 10:34 am (UTC)https://youtu.be/8-UJR2tip3c
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Date: 2025-07-24 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 05:07 pm (UTC)Oh, interesting! I remember the black and white to color transition in the Wizard of Oz movie, and I remember the Emerald City (and later learning about the colors significance), but not the goggles (the horse of a different color made more of an impression on me). I did think I'd read the book, but maybe not.
I don't think I'm going to get around to watching the movie from the Hugos voter packet before the deadline tonight. I'm much more of a reader and podcast listener these days, and I haven't heard anything about Wicked that makes me want to watch it (I haven't read it either).
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Date: 2025-07-24 02:39 am (UTC)The movie isn't ashamed of being a musical (unlike some movie musical adaptions I could name), so, I think like the show, its drive and pace help cover the places where it is very much its own thing, not really a "the other side" fanfic of Baum. I'm also uninterested in the book, but I might see the show.
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Date: 2025-07-24 10:54 pm (UTC)