Open Heart Surgery on the Yellow Brick Road?

This portrayal of the companions from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is by Sabrina Alberghetti, an artist in Vancouver, via deviantArt. She also shared her sketches for this piece and some other sketches of a hip-hop Scarecrow.

I’m not at all sure what’s going on in this scene, but the characters have a lot of character.

Don’t You Hate When This Happens?

Opposition “at every opportunity”

The New Yorker examines what I call OIP Derangement Syndrome with an article by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post on how Republicans shifted positions on the “individual mandate” for health insurance.

The approach was invented the Heritage Foundation, introduced into Congress by Republicans, pushed here in Massachusetts by Republican governor Mitt Romney, and championed as recently as 2009 by party leaders. But as soon as President Barack Obama agreed to include it in his health-insurance proposals, Republicans branded their party’s idea not only undesirable but unconstitutional.

Klein’s article highlights how Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) made an individual mandate part of a bill he designed during the Bush-Cheney administration:

“Between 2004 and 2008, I saw over eighty members of the Senate, and there were very few who objected,” Wyden says. In December, 2006, he unveiled the Healthy Americans Act. In May, 2007, Bob Bennett, a Utah Republican, who had been a sponsor of the Chafee bill [that also included the mandate], joined him. Wyden-Bennett was eventually co-sponsored by eleven Republicans and nine Democrats, receiving more bipartisan support than any universal health-care proposal in the history of the Senate. . . .

This process led, eventually, to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—better known as Obamacare—which also included an individual mandate. But, as that bill came closer to passing, Republicans began coalescing around the mandate, which polling showed to be one of the legislation’s least popular elements. In December, 2009, in a vote on the bill, every Senate Republican voted to call the individual mandate “unconstitutional.”

This shift—Democrats lining up behind the Republican-crafted mandate, and Republicans declaring it not just inappropriate policy but contrary to the wishes of the Founders—shocked Wyden. “I would characterize the Washington, D.C., relationship with the individual mandate as truly schizophrenic,” he said. . . .

Even Bob Bennett, who was among the most eloquent advocates of the mandate, voted, in 2009, to call it unconstitutional. . . . Explaining his decision to vote against the law, Bennett, who was facing a Tea Party challenger in a primary, says, “I didn’t focus on the particulars of the amendment as closely as I should have, and probably would have voted the other way if I had understood that the individual mandate was at its core. I just wanted to express my opposition to the Obama proposal at every opportunity.”

Drawing on work by professors of law, psychology, and political science, Klein explores why the Republican Party reversed course so quickly and completely on one of its own policy ideas. But at its core the opposition arose just as Bennett described it: “I just wanted to express my opposition to the Obama proposal at every opportunity.”

Dorothy Gale in Manchester

From Angelica Carpenter, Curator Emerita at the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, comes word of this call for papers from Britain.

Returning to Oz: The Afterlife of Dorothy

Thursday 7th February 2013
Manchester, UK

Papers are sought for a one-day conference in Manchester on representations and interpretations of Dorothy and Oz in popular culture. This conference seeks to address the perennial popularity of L. Frank Baum’s creations, and to explore their most recent incarnations.

Possible themes may include (but are not limited to):
• Film, TV and animated adaptations
• Sequels and prequels (other than Baum’s series); translations, editions and revisions
• Music and musicals
• Kitsch
• ‘Friends of Dorothy’ and gay culture
• MGM and Judy Garland
• Graphic novels and visual art
• Merchandise, memorabilia and ephemera

This conference is the sister project to our Further Adventures in Wonderland: The Afterlife of Alice project. As such, papers are also welcomed that offer some comparison of the respective afterlives of Alice and Dorothy, or that deal with texts featuring both characters.

Abstracts of 250-300 words (for a 20 min paper) should be sent via email to the CONFERENCE CONVENORS by 30th September 2012.

Selected papers may be invited for inclusion in an academic collection of essays following the conference.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it might be an opportunity to write about interpretations of Oz and to explore part of Britain that I’ve never seen, visiting Godson and his family along the way.

On the other hand, I think it’s very important to note that Dorothy has no “afterlife” because Dorothy is living in Oz where no one dies.

Odysseus, Siddhartha, Dorothy

The latest New York Times Book Review has an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, about her reading. Among the questions:

What were your favorite books as a child? Did you have a favorite character or hero?

The complete “Wizard of Oz” series, by L. Frank Baum. Over the course of those 14 books, stalwart Dorothy Gale triumphs, step by step, through precisely what Joseph Campbell would later call “the hero’s journey.” I think Dorothy may be the only little Midwestern girl you could ever put in the same archetypal category as Odysseus or Siddhartha. She was absolutely totemic for me.

Dorothy doesn’t appear in The Marvelous Land of Oz, and plays a supporting role in some other books, but she truly is an archetype. As well as a regular little girl.

When Teenaged Superheroes Have Grown Up

As fans digested the details of DC Comics’s latest new universe, the loudest cries of lamented concerned particular characters who no longer exist in the company ’s main continuity:

• Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third Flash.
• Donna Troy, known as Wonder Girl, Troia, Darkstar, and finally Donna Troy.
• Cassandra Cain, the second Batgirl (third, if we count Bat-Girl Betty Kane) and then Black Bat.
• Stephanie Brown, who fought crime as Spoiler, Robin, and Batgirl.

What do those characters have in common? They all arrived on the scene as teenagers and have grown up over time. Their overall story arcs have therefore all been about coming of age: becoming independent young adults, taking on adult roles (with new costumes and identities), and in the case of Wally and Donna raising children themselves. Change is essential to the stories of characters who are growing up.

While I’ve also seen laments for the loss of some characters from the comedic Justice League International of the late 1980s (Ted Kord, Ralph and Sue Dibny), those haven’t been nearly as passionate or prolonged. Those characters are adult and therefore basically fixed in personality. We can enjoy seeing them bounce against others, but we don’t expect them to change greatly. Adult superheroes are defined by unresolvable foundational conflicts.

When DC Comics rebooted its universe, it aimed to simplify its past—which necessarily meant setting aside Donna Troy. Her background is so confused that Marv Wolfman has co-invented three different origins for her.

The company’s new universe also turned back the apparent ages of its main characters. Recent magazines have shown Superman and the Justice League launching their careers in the recent past, and a new Teen Titans gathering for the first time. Several teenaged characters—Superboy, Beast Boy, the second Kid Flash, the second Wonder Girl, and more—have been radically reinvented as new characters with new pasts.

So why hasn’t the company reintroduced Wally, Cassandra, and Stephanie as young people? This spring Cody Walker for Bleeding Cool asked DC co-Publisher Dan Didio about the first, and I think the answer applies to the others as well:

He explained that fans had grown up with Wally West, seen him get married and have children[;] and with the de-aging of Barry Allen, it would cheat those fans who grew to love Wally to de-age him as well. 

After some grumbling, Kelson Vibber at Speedforce (a website devoted to all things Flashy) wrote:

Wally West…was fleshed out as a real, dynamic character, whose journey was central to who he was. We didn’t just grow up with Wally West; he grew up with us.

The story of Barry Allen has always been simple: Police scientist gets hit by lightning and becomes a super-speed hero.

The story of Wally West, however, has been the story of a boy who gets his greatest wish — to become just like his hero — and then has to struggle with living up to that responsibility. It’s a story with a beginning (Wally as sidekick), a middle (Wally struggles to live up to his uncle’s legacy), and, if not an end per se, a conclusion (Wally becomes a mature adult, a seasoned hero, and a family man).

Rewind Barry Allen’s life? No problem. Rewind Wally West’s life? You destroy what made him most interesting to many of his fans. . . .

It comes down to the classic question of change vs. the illusion of change. You can keep telling stories about a guy with super-speed forever. But at some point, stories about a guy with super-speed who grows into his destiny have to become stories about something else.

Now I didn’t grow up with Wally West. I met that character in the New Teen Titans of the early 1980s when he was a contrast with Dick Grayson as Robin and the other team members: “terminally normal” from a happy Midwestern family, politically conservative, tending to self-doubt, finally giving up being a speedster because of health problems. That version of the character was wiped out in Crisis on Infinite Earths a quarter-century ago. (But am I bitter? Rararargh.)

After Barry Allen died in that crisis, Wally West stepped up into the role of the Flash—but he wasn’t the same “terminally normal” Wally as before. His father turned out to be a nasty secret agent. He wanted money for his heroics, if only to live on. He left the Titans to join the Justice League. And over time he grew up, as DiDio and Vibber described, proving himself as hero and a person.

The same situation applies to Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown. They successfully came of age. When last seen, Cass Cain had conquered her language issues, daddy issues, mommy issues, and guilt about her past as an assassin to become the independent Hong Kong crime-fighter Black Bat. Stephanie Brown had won the respect of Tim Drake and Bruce Wayne, faced down her father, and shared her secret life with her mother.

To reintroduce those characters as young people in the new DC universe with their previous identities and challenges would mean erasing those triumphs. Instead, we can choose to interpret the multi-year sagas of Wally, Cass, and Stephanie in the 1986-2011 DC Universe as coming-of-age novels. And those characters won.

COMING UP: Why doesn’t the same logic apply to Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, and Barbara Gordon?

“I have no intention of interrupting the President”

This week’s example of OIP Derangement Syndrome comes from Neil Munro, reporter for the right-wing website Daily Caller, who interrupted President Barack Obama’s Rose Garden statement on immigration-law enforcement by shouting.

Munro later claimed, “I timed the question believing the President was closing his remarks, because naturally I have no intention of interrupting the President of the United States.”

That excuse is not believable. The transcript shows that President Obama was in the middle of a paragraph, with eight paragraphs of his prepared statement to go. In fact, he was in the middle of a sentence. Furthermore, even after it was clear that Obama wasn’t finished, Munro shouted out again.

Obviously Munro did have the “intention of interrupting the President of the United States.” That experiment was run, and the results are on tape. Munro’s excuse didn’t fool other reporters who were there. While he might wish to deny what he did, that denial of his visceral responses and motivations is part of OIP Derangement Syndrome.

Munro and his employer have claimed that such aggressive questioning was necessary. But when Obama directly addressed Munro’s question, the reporter interrupted again before the end of a short sentence. Furthermore, the President had held a formal press conference on 8 June, only one week earlier. He’s held more than twice as many solo press conferences (31) at this point in his presidency as his predecessor (14), and sat for more interviews (441) than his two predecessors combined (322). People who suffer from OIP Derangement Syndrome push away such facts because the very sight of Barack Obama as President discomfits them.

It’s curious that Munro shouted, “Why do you favor foreigners over American workers?” He came to the US from Ireland in the 1980s. He’d have had more credibility asking what the new policy implied for immigrants who follow US rules. But then he wasn’t really seeking an answer; he was shouting at a President he doesn’t want to respect.

I’m more curious about Munro’s commentary of Republicans’ recent accusations about security leaks since Munro’s LinkedIn profile boasts: “I unveiled a bunch of secret programs, including a polar-orbiting, missile-tracking satellite, and the Navy’s test stealth-ship.” Of course, the essence of OIP Derangement Syndrome is different standards for different people.

The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Mothers

From Dwight Garner’s review in the New York Times of Colm Tóibín’s New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families:

His essential point, driven home in an essay about all the motherless heroes and heroines in the novels of Henry James and Jane Austen, is that “mothers get in the way of fiction; they take up the space that is better filled by indecision, by hope, by the slow growth of a personality.” To put it another way, he writes, “The novel is a ripe form for orphans.”

That’s long been true of children’s fiction, where even young heroes who leave the protection of home (e.g., Dorothy Gale, Huckleberry Finn, Harry Potter) don’t have living mothers to begin with. Of course, there are also many classic and popular children’s novels in which mothers are a strong presence (Little Women, the Little House books, and Harry Potter again).

Another Look at the Sawhorse and the Guardian of the Gates

The secret of yesterday’s little Oz tale is that it’s also a Petrarchan sonnet.

The Sawhorse clattered to a halt beside
The city gate. “Unlock the doors!” he called.

The Guardian of the Gates around the walled
Metropolis regretfully replied,
“Believe me, all this afternoon I’ve tried.
The iron bar that holds the doors is stalled,
And nobody can leave the Emerald—”

“Who let this happen?”

                    “I,” the Guardian sighed.
“I took a wishing pill to be a bard,
Completing verses for my tunes. But fate
Has barred me from the post I was assigned.”

The Sawhorse pawed the ground and pondered hard.
“What tune?” he asked.

                    The Guardian sang. The gate
Swung free. “But how?”

                    “You sang your opening line.”

Looking back, I recall being dissatisfied with this item as a story, even a slight one, so I recycled the final pun in different form into a tale titled “Dearest Mother” later printed in an issue of Oziana. But the original stayed on my hard drive, awaiting a day when I needed a blog entry.

Above is the Sawhorse as depicted by Bill Campbell of The Oz Enthusiast.

The Sawhorse and the Guardian of the Gates

I found this thin little Oz story in a twelve-year-old file on my hard drive.

The Sawhorse clattered to a halt beside the city gate. “Unlock the doors!” he called.

The Guardian of the Gates around the walled metropolis regretfully replied, “Believe me, all this afternoon I’ve tried. The iron bar that holds the doors is stalled, and nobody can leave the Emerald—”

“Who let this happen?”

“I,” the Guardian sighed. “I took a wishing pill to be a bard, completing verses for my tunes. But fate has barred me from the post I was assigned.”

The Sawhorse pawed the ground and pondered hard. “What tune?” he asked.

The Guardian sang. The gates swung free. “But how?”

“You sang your opening line.”

This Guardian is presumably the one in The Patchwork Girl of Oz, who plays the title character a tune on his mouth organ. I’ve theorized elsewhere that he’s not actually the same Guardian of the Gates in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Marvelous Land of Oz, and other books (as shown above, depicted by W. W. Denslow), but rather a temporary substitute. The usual Guardian seems much more dedicated to his job than the one who composes music.

TOMORROW: The secret of this story.