What "The Wizard Of Oz" Might Mean (1900-Present) w/ Ranjit Dighe

This Day

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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Today, with the release of WICKED in movie theaters, we look at the many political interpretations of "The Wizard of Oz."

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Ranjit Dighe, chair of the Economics department at SUNY-Oswego, to discuss the theory that "The Wizard of Oz" is a parable about the 1893 banking crisis -- plus the many other ways that people have found meaning in the book and movie over the years.

Ranjit is the editor of "The Historian's Wizard Of Oz"

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.
0:10.0	This day in 1939, the nation is enraptured by the hit movie of the year, one of the first movies to
0:16.8	truly showcase the power of Technicolor film, The Wizard of Oz. And I don't know if they
0:21.9	talked about in 1939 the so-called four quadrant movies, but that's the term they use for
0:27.4	movies that appeal to all the main demographics, male, female, people over 25, people, under 25,
0:33.4	but this movie kind of has it all. It has funny characters, musical numbers, action.
0:44.9	And then there is the often ignored fifth quadrant of the movie going public monetary policy conspiracy theorists.
0:50.1	Because basically, since this movie came out, and even before then, since the book that the movie was based on came out,
0:58.8	there have been theories about what the gold means, what the silver means, whether the tin man represents the industrial age and the scarecrow represents the common farmer who was being squeezed by modern America. And that, of course, is not to mention the many other
1:03.2	theories that have come out about what this movie means as a religious allegory. And then in the
1:08.4	80s, we get the whiz, which we made it with an all-black
1:11.1	cast. And then, of course, now we have Wicked, the musical, now the hit movie, which layers
1:16.7	on all sorts of other meaning and room for interpretation. So the Wizard of Oz is, as they say,
1:22.4	a very, very rich text. And we want to dive in with a quick tour of all the ways that people have
1:28.1	overthought the Wizard of Oz over the years. So here, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt
1:33.5	and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello, Jody. Hey there. And our guest for this
1:38.9	episode is Ranjit de Gay, who is an economic history professor at Sunni Oswego, who has written multiple papers
1:45.4	about the politics of Wizard of Oz and El Frank Baum, who's the person who wrote the book
1:50.4	in 1900. And Ranjit, you also edited a sort of compendium of essays called, what was it
1:56.5	called? The Historians Wizard of Oz. Right. So you are the person for the job.
2:01.7	Thank you.
2:03.9	But anyway, thank you for joining us, Rangy.
	...

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