THE WIZARD OF OZ: Jungian Archetypes & Antifascism

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors

Last week I was talking about activating powerful archetypes in our books and scripts, and The Wizard of Oz came immediately to mind as:

1. One of the greatest uses of Jungian archetypes in film history

2. One of the greatest anti-totalitarian movies from the last fascist swell of history - and a great textbook for us writers to look at for how to fight the current one.

3. One of the greatest examples of a Heroine’s Journey structure.

And it’s also a great way for me to work my way back into the progression of Story Elements, for those of us who are starting a new book or rewriting one!

Wizard is great teaching movie because we all know it so well. Or we think we do!

People love to break down this movie. God knows I understand that. I’ve used tons of examples from Wizard myself. We all know the film, so it makes sense to reference it. But The Wizard of Oz is such a special case. It’s a deceptively simple film with profound psychological and political undercurrents. And it is an iconic movie for so many reasons that I wouldn’t possibly want to have to explain; it’s like explaining sunlight, or, hmm, a rainbow. You can break it down into its elements, but that will never give you the experience. There was a special magic (which my film agent calls “the movie gods”) looking over that movie through all its harrowing changes of writers, directors, actors, etc.—and let's not forget that it was based on a classic series of books — and, oh, yeah — it's a friggin' musical. And all that terrifying mess somehow combined to make a classic. It is not something anyone could ever duplicate by design.

Just consider what The Wizard of Oz would have looked like had Shirley Temple (often named as the top pre-production choice for Dorothy) been cast instead of Judy Garland.

The casting of Garland, and her lush, just blossoming, completely vulnerable sexuality, totally changed the dynamic of the character and every single interaction she had with the other characters in the movie. It changed the meaning of the journey. A young woman’s dream, or fantasy, or metaphorical journey — whatever you want to call that adventure to Oz — is completely different from a child’s. Teenagers yearn for significantly different things than children do.

When I was a preteen I was sure that the whole The Wizard of Oz journey was Dorothy's dream letting her explore which one of the three farmhands she wanted to marry — as a young woman reaching marriageable age, those men would be her obvious choices in such a farm town. In Oz, Hunk/the Scarecrow is the first one she meets, and over and over and over again the Scarecrow steps forward as the problem solver and her biggest defender. (She also dances with him in a musical number that was cut from the final film, “The Jitterbug,”and as any dancer or choreographer knows, when two characters dance in a musical, that means sex.) When she leaves Oz, she tells the Scarecrow she'll miss him most of all, and when she wakes up in bed, he kneels by the bed and she touches his face. She's chosen.

I would tell people this occasionally in college and they'd laugh — but years later I read much more about the elaborate history of the film and learned that the final scene of an earlier script really had concluded with Hunk going off to agricultural school and winning a promise from Dorothy to write to him, implying a romance that would continue (and marriage once “The Scarecrow” had his real-life diploma).

Okay, I might be the only person who’s ever watched The Wizard of Oz and gotten that out of it. But my analysis of the subtext is meaningful to me, just as my analysis of Ophelia’s role in Hamlet is, and my strong personal opinions on the movies I watch and the books I read, however obscure they may seem to other people, have been invaluable to my growth as a writer. My point is, a lot goes into creating a film or book, a lot of it unquantifiable, and even if some writer or teacher or workshop leader breaks it down brilliantly for you, it's even more important for you to figure out what you think is going on in that film or book.

I’ll continue this longest disclaimer in history by saying it’s confusing even to break this movie into sequences, because it is a musical, and musical numbers were cut and rearranged (and rightly so!) during editing which would have made the timing of the sequence structure make more conventional sense. Just as an example: the studio wanted “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” cut because it made the first Kansas sequence too long, but the movie gods apparently intervened, the song remained, completely screwing with the sequence timing, and film students have been arguing about the Act One break ever since.

BUT.

All that being said, The Wizard of Oz is also a pretty perfect template for the Hero/ine’s Journey structure, with some of the best-realized examples of key story elements you’re ever going to find on celluloid. It gives us all something to aspire to.

I also have to admit, I’ve seen this incredibly complicated movie broken down so appallingly simplistically I feel the need to do something in its defense.

So for better or worse, here we go.

The Wizard of Oz

• Directed by Victor Fleming

• Written by Noel Langley & Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf (screenplay); Noel Langley (adaptation)

• From the book by L. Frank Baum

• Produced by Mervyn LeRoy

• Music and lyrics by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg

• Running time: 101 minutes

ACT I:

SEQUENCE 1:

Now, you may be tempted to read through this whole post fast, but I implore you to really read these paragraphs about OPENING IMAGE, which I talk about often, but I should do a full post about next!

In the olden days, before ADHD, movies had credits sequences at the beginning of the film. Nowadays apparently audiences lack the attention span to sit through a credits sequence, so the credits go at the end. But if you’re looking at a classic movie there are often two separate OPENING IMAGES: the image(s) under the credits sequence, and the actual opening visual of the film. In Wizard, the image under the credits sequence is slow movement through clouds in a blue sky (only it’s black and white!), setting up the subliminal idea that we are going to be up in those clouds pretty soon.

Then there is a placard telling us that this is a beloved classic story for the young and the young at heart. Opening scrolls or placards give us the sense that this is an Important Story, even maybe epic. (Think of “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...”)

Then we get the true OPENING IMAGE, and INTRODUCTION OF THE HEROINE: We see Dorothy running on a country road under stormy skies. This is a great opening image because it directly introduces Dorothy's PROBLEM and sets up her CHARACTER ARC. We learn in the opening lines that Dorothy is running away from Miss Gulch, the tyrant of the county, and that Dorothy fears retaliation because Toto, her beloved dog, has bitten Miss Gulch, and Miss Gulch has threatened to call the sheriff.

Throughout the first act, and most of the film, Dorothy’s answer to the threat of Miss Gulch is to run away — here, and in her Wish song (she wants to be over the rainbow, away from her troubles), and then when she runs away with Toto, and later when she tries to escape from Oz to evade the Wicked Witch. But the truth of her situation is she is never going to be able to run away from Miss Gulch. If she wants to live a fulfilled life in this town, she is going to have to face and defeat this powerful ANTAGONIST. The whole story of the film is Dorothy’s psychological transformation; she is going through an inner journey, through this dream of Oz, to internalize the qualities of braininess, heart, and courage — and all the powerful qualities of her higher self, Glinda — so that as she grows into a woman, she will be able to use those qualities against Miss Gulch (and any other enemies that come up) instead of running away as she does at the beginning of the movie. And in the FINAL BATTLE, she will face Miss Gulch in her scariest incarnation, the Wicked Witch of the West, and defeat her.

In just a few seconds, the opening image sets up this theme of running away. It’s a priceless lesson in how to set up a character from the beginning so that it will feel like a huge character arc when they finally face their greatest fear in the end.

The opening image also incorporates the open road, letting us know that this is a road trip story, and suggests the storm to come, as well as immediately setting up the bleak grayness of Kansas, the ORDINARY WORLD which is in such contrast to the spectacular beauty of the SPECIAL WORLD of Oz. All in all a very layered image, a textbook example of how much you can convey in the first shot of a film or first page of a book.

Next we see Dorothy at the farm and more images of the ORDINARY WORLD. We meet Dorothy’s guardians (part of Dorothy’s GHOST/WOUND is the implied loss of her parents; she’s an orphan). Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, plain, hardworking people who care for Dorothy, but have no real time for her. Dorothy tries her best to explain the danger, the threats that Miss Gulch has made against Toto, but her aunt and uncle have problems of their own (the broken chick incubator) and can’t help her. Dorothy then goes to her ALLIES, the three farmhands: Hunk, Hickory, and Zeke, and tries to get help from them. [3:10] Each man has his own comic (but not very helpful) advice about the situation, and their dialogue, movement, and gestures are laced with Setups (PLANTS) that will be paid off when we meet the three allies again in Oz. Then Aunt Em shoos Dorothy away with an admonition to “find someplace where you can’t get in any trouble,” the lead-in to Dorothy’s “Wish Song” — “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” [5 minutes, 30 seconds.]

The protagonist’s first song in a musical is almost always an “I Am” song or an “I Wish” song, which spells out the character’s OUTER DESIRE. Dorothy longs to journey over the rainbow, where “troubles melt like lemon drops.” Again, her instinct (and PLAN) is to escape, rather than face her problem. Notice that this song not only makes us identify with Dorothy, but also strongly features Toto. We must fall in love with this little dog, and quickly, because the great FEAR the filmmakers are creating here is that Toto will die. Talk about STAKES! A child’s greatest fear, besides the loss of their parents, is the loss of a pet. (Let’s not kid ourselves, it’s also one of the biggest griefs we experience as adults.) “Over the Rainbow” is one of the ultimate tearjerker songs — remember, one of the prime reasons we go to the movies is to experience the CATHARSIS of tears. The beauty and longing of the song, Judy Garland’s breathtaking talent and heartbreaking vulnerability, and the emotional tug we get from those close-ups of the little dog all work to lower our defenses and provide an excellent opportunity for weeping, if we happen to need it.

And then in a splendid moment of contrast, just as we’re wide open emotionally and probably dissolved in a puddle, we cut from the end of the song to Miss Gulch furiously pedaling her bike toward the farm (with that ominous theme music underneath). Uh oh. Dorothy was right. (A great demonstration of how to intensify an audience’s sense of FEAR and DREAD by opening up their emotions first, and then hitting them with the threat.) [7:55]

There’s a comic moment at the fence, Uncle Henry serving briefly as a GUARDIAN AT THE GATE, brandishing his paintbrush at her like a weapon, not allowing Miss Gulch in at first, and letting the gate hit her on the backside. (There are many GUARDIAN AT THE GATE moments in this film, and it’s good to set up a running theme like this early on.) But this is an ineffectual protest by Uncle Henry, and a demonstration of a huge PROBLEM: no one in the county has the courage to stand up to Miss Gulch.

[8:27] In the next scene inside the parlor, Miss Gulch pulls out an order from the sheriff demanding Dorothy “surrender” (SET UP) Toto to her so he can be “destroyed.” (The INCITING INCIDENT/CALL TO ADVENTURE — the event that forces the heroine to take action). And we see Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are unable to help, though it clearly pains them; Miss Gulch “owns half the county” and threatens the loss of the farm if they don’t give her the dog (a good example of the antagonist’s tyranny). Aunt Em protests, “For twenty three years I’ve been dying to tell you what I think of you… but being a Christian woman I can’t say it.” This all adds to Dorothy’s sense of fear and isolation — her parental figures are unable to help her or to protect her dog. And in the end, Miss Gulch takes Toto.

Another very layered scene here. Let’s take a look.

Miss Gulch is not only the ANTAGONIST, she is Dorothy’s GHOST, and the town’s ghost, and Aunt Em and Uncle Henry’s ghost. The film was developed in the late 1930’s, when Hitler was coming to power in Germany, Stalin was already carrying out the Great Terror in Russia, and just as we’re experiencing right now, the rise of these tyrants was a looming fear in thinking Americans’ minds. There is no doubt that the political darkness building overseas had a profound influence on the development of this film; Miss Gulch is portrayed as a tyrant in the county and a threat that is not going to go away, but no one in the county has had the courage to face off with this woman. And yet we see teenage Dorothy stand up to her, shouting at her, calling her a “wicked old witch” (SET UP), even physically shoving her basket away. This is a girl with courage, who has the potential to defy Miss Gulch. Dorothy’s INNER DESIRE, though she does not know it yet, is to defeat Miss Gulch. And she does not yet have the power to defeat this villain, but by the end of the journey of the film, she will have gained that power.

Full breakdown of The Wizard of Oz in Stealing Hollywood.