- Hello internet, my name is Daniel.
It sure was hard growing up with an apostrophe
in your name for like scantrons and stuff O'Brien.
Welcome to another unforgettable episode
of Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder.
The only show in the internet that is called
that I think.
When we came up with the show we didn't have lawyers yet
so we didn't look into things like titles yet.
Someone else could easily own the trademark.
Today's thing is, today's thing I have no idea
why it's so important to me to pretend
I don't put work into my show.
I'm sure it adds the charm.
Anyway, the Wizard of Oz.
Even if you're never watched the 1939 classic
the Wizard of Oz, you're probably familiar
with its plot and characters.
Dorothy, a lonely Kansas farm girl
who counts middle aged farmhands and a dog
as her only friends bumps her head during a tornado
and passes out.
While sleeping, she has what most of us would consider
a traumatizing nightmare.
Oh yeah, we should have a title card.
In which she casts herself as an unwitting murderer,
not once, but twice, three times if you
count what she did to fashion wearing socks with pumps.
Does that count as a fashion murder?
I don't know, I'm not the authority
because below this desk I'm wearing a bathing suit.
But it seems like probably a fashion crime of some kind.
Her first episode of manslaughter happens
when her house lands on the Wicked Witch of the East,
a living, breathing, humanish person
who's death immediately prompts a joyful song
about how she's totally dead and burning in hell now.
♫ Ding dong the witch is dead
♫ The wicked witch
Manslaughter number two happens when
Dorothy accidentally throws water on the
Wicked Witch of the East's sister,
the Wicked Witch of the West.
I guess if you have siblings,
your Wizard of Oz name is the one adjective
you share with your siblings
plus the most basic thing that you are
plus your location relative to your brothers and sisters.
Which I supposed makes me Sweaty Boy West Coast.
I have lots of nicknames and that's not
even in the top 10 of the worst.
Anyway, water it turns out was WWW's only allergy.
She probably melts and it's terrifying.
Take it from me, Old Splash Mouth.
Her death is also greeted with cheers
because the only other person who loved her
is decomposing under a house in Munchinland.
Sidebar, I know there was a series of books
and a huge musical that humanized the witches
Elfba and Nessa as they came to be known,
but no one was thinking about that
when they made this movie.
They're just like (beep) these witches
'cause I hate them, I sure hope no one
retroactively makes them sympathetic when we're dead.
That's messed up.
We should talk about it but we won't
because there's another title card coming.
Before we get into color and Munchkinland,
Dorothy gets upset because her beloved dog Toto
bites a mean neighbor Ms. Gulch
and Gulch is like you gotta kill that (beep) dog.
Here's a letter from the sheriff that says so.
- That's for the sheriff to decide.
Here's his order allowing me to take him.
Unless you wanna go against the law.
- And I agree that the neighbor is awful
and the audience is supposed to agree as well
which is why she is the analog for the main witch in Oz.
But like
you can't have dogs biting people,
that's a law we still have.
Certainly if my perfect dog bit some jerk
and they were like put it in my basket
so I can take it to the sheriff to be destroyed,
I'd be like one second, but first real quick, get (beep)
and then I'd run away and my dog and I would
change our identities.
But the law is definitely the law.
Toto bite that woman.
The main reason I bring up Toto
is that we spend the whole movie in Oz
with Dorothy's adventures and then she comes
back to the real world and everything's okay
because it was just a dream except
the dog stuff right?
Except Ms. Gulch still wants to murder her dog right?
The inciting incident of the movie.
That doesn't get resolved just because Dorothy
got her (beep) head bashed in.
They're still gonna kill that dog.
If most of the movie was supposed to be a dream,
the only real parts we have are
Dorothy's dog bit a woman who owns half the county
and it's and issue.
But still, that's not even the biggest problem
I have with the movie and plot twist,
this is barely even about what happened in the movie.
Joining Dorothy in her imaginary technicolor escape
from justice are the three men who work on her family farm
now dressed up like freaks.
Her choice companions are problematic in my book
but I'll get to that in a minute.
The real problem with the Wizard of Oz
is that Dorothy's dream was never meant
to be a dream at all.
When L. Frank Baum wrote the Wizard of Oz,
he played it straight as in Dorothy really did
travel to Oz and met a scarecrow, lion and tin man
and those three friends weren't just lazy analogs
for the adult men in her life.
Magic was real.
It was MGM, the studio behind the movie,
who looked at the box office numbers
behind recent fantasy movies and decided audiences needed
their witch and wizard stories grounding in reality.
So they settled on the tired old Allison in Wonderland,
it was all a dream ending.
Why was this a big deal?
In one two minute scene, the studio stripped Dorothy
of her entire adventure and turned her into a crazy person.
- She got quite a bump on the head.
We kind of thought there for
a minute she was going to leave us.
- But I didn't leave you Uncle Henry,
that's just the trouble.
I tried to get back for days and days.
- There, there, lie quiet now.
You just had a bad dream.
- Without the dream, Dorothy is Luke Skywalker,
Harry Potter and ET rolled into one.
She was conceived in print before
most Americans had flushing toilets in their homes.
Without the dream, she's a real deal witch slaughter
who traveled on foot across a country
that no one in her world had ever seen before.
She built a team of fellow adventurers,
exposed a fraudulent leader, and liberated
two different races of Oz dweller from bondage.
She even survived a heroin overdose.
- Here Tinman, help me.
Oh this is terrible.
- Turn her whole story into a dream and we've got problems.
For one thing, this teenage girl passes out,
wakes up and blurts out that the three men
who work on her aunt and uncle's farm
were with her on her dream.
- And you and you and you
and you were there.
- Not her aunt or her uncle, just their work hands.
That's a sex dream right?
Oh you know the farmhand well I had this crazy dream
where I helped get him a hardon and he loved it.
Even if we take the high road and dismiss the obvious
indisputable fact that Dorothy's whole adventure
in Oz was a sexual awakening, there are much
bigger problems at play with her story
becoming a dream sequence.
The first is that everyone in the room
laughs at her when she tells them where she went.
- All I kept saying to everybody is I wanna go home.
They sent me home.
- When she asks doesn't anybody believe me,
her uncle answers of course we believe you
with the enthusiasm of a wet sock.
- Doesn't anybody believe me?
- Of course we believe you Dorothy.
- In the next breath Dorothy gives up believing
her dream was real, cheerfully exclaiming,
well anyway Toto we're home.
And announces I'm not ever going
to leave here ever, ever again.
Or you know, that line but with a reasonably
convincing Judy Garland impression.
I'm better at guy voices.
- But anyway Toto, we're home.
And I'm not gonna leave here ever, ever again.
- The book ends with Dorothy landing back home,
hugging her aunt and saying I'm so glad to be at home again.
The movie ends with Dorothy professing
her undying love for her home,
like her house is a new God that needs
her exclamations of loyalty.
Everyone but our camera operator take a step back
and think about who was in those first audiences
watching Dorothy accept that her death defying
romp through Oz was just a fantasy
and being at home is all that matters.
It may have been 1939, but I'm guessing the seats
were filled with the same kinds of people
who go to family movies today, moms and kids.
But these weren't just any moms.
In a few short years, the moms in the Oz audience
would be asked to do something that no generation
of women had ever done before,
get out of the house and start working
for the good of the country.
That's right, it's a feminism and a war thing.
You thought I was just making fun of a perfect movie
because I'm weird.
Well guess what, I am but I'm also passionate
and preaching.
By 1944, here were over 19 million women
in American factories, shipyards, and offices
presumably riveting everything they could get their
more weathered than my current hands on.
But when their husbands and boyfriends
and brothers came back from World War Two,
the ladies were sent home so the vets could have jobs.
In other words, they got Dorothyed.
After learning how to build cool stuff
and manage the home front while the men were away,
women got the message that their adventure was over
and home was where they belong.
One of the first people to give them that message
was Dorothy herself.
America got one main stream fantasy hereon
through most of the 20th century
and some nameless executive not only turned
her whole hero's journey into a make believe story
in her head but they also landed her exactly
where she started with no lessons learned
other than stay home forever.
Also, and I need to point this out,
this is one of my favorite Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder
observations and I think the obvious reason behind that
is that I didn't come up with this one.
Christy Harrison wrote this because she watches the
Wizard of Oz and thinks have you considered
how studio executive turns what was a feminist
hero story into propaganda to keep woman
out of the workforce after the war?
I watch Wizard of Oz and think flying monkeys,
I'd like a flying monkey.
If I had one I'd name it Walter.
That's the most I've ever thought about this movie.
Anyway, Christy, what was that, there was a war you say?
Get right outta town.
Christy should be doing this video instead of me
but she can't because she's busy doing
literally the exact same nine to five job as me
while also raising three children.
I'm the guy who gets to say God, it's exhausting
coming up with another OBCD every month.
Christy legitimately emailed to say,
hey I found some free time and wrote this thing
that might work for your show if you need it.
Christy is talented and thoughtful and supportive.
You should all have a Christy in your life.
Women!
Anyway, that's it for this month.
Join us next week when our topic will be
Christy said what about me?
She thinks she can take my job?
Well guess what honey I got, bye, I got news for you.
You are a serpent, you are a duplicitous snake Christy.
Your kids are (beep)
(laughter)