We're off to see...

Before I get too into The Wizard of Oz specifically, allow me to say this: Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the novel Salman Rushdie wrote inspired by Wizard, is fucking incredible. One of my all time favorite books actually. Check it out.

Anyway! Onto the program - in this case, a cute little clip of some Indian schoolchildren singing along to music from the The Wizard of Oz. A sign of globalization if there ever was one. Even the singing (which appears to mostly be in Hindi? Not sure, but then again, I am deaf after all) is proof that language barriers are a thing of the past in our "information superhighway" age, if you want to call it that. Just as Rushdie himself was inspired to pick up a pen from the moment he saw The Wizard of Oz, perhaps one or more of these children will end up inspired in the same way: "[It] was my very first literary influence” (9). To see children imitating a film in which "the weakness of grown-ups forces children to take control of their own destinies and so, ironically, grow up on themselves" is interesting because it is a rather cynical but ultimately beneficial message for children. The performance seems loose enough that it's at least somewhat improvised, and I don't see anybody conducting them, so perhaps it is a literal, real-world example of how children can learn from Dorothy. These cute little munchkins (sorry couldn't resist) are also dancing in front of a picture of Jesus on the wall, which is unusual given Rushdie's appreciation of the atheist nature of Oz. Anyway, the other bit that stays with me the most whenever I reread Rushdie's essay - and it is very reread-able - is the assertion that the fantasy is indeed better than reality, even if the film tries to show otherwise through the dialog:

Thanks to Miss Gulch, this cinematic Kansas is informed not only by the sadness of dirt-poverty but also by the badness of would-be dog murderers. And this is the home that there’s no place like? This is the lost Eden that we are asked to prefer (as Dorothy does) to Oz?

A valid and also a bit sobering question indeed. Kansas is indeed a dull depressing backdrop, literally. No wonder these kids like acting out the make-believe and sing along to Dorothy to escape from the dull reality of a classroom, even if only for a few seconds. Like Rushdie, I'll take the fantasyland any day.