71–80 of 113 posts
From "Debt, The First 5000 years": L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which appeared in 1900, is widely recognized to be a parable for the Populist campaign of William Jennings Bryan, who twice ran for president on the Free Silver platform – vowing to replace the gold standard with a bimetallic system that would allow the free creation of silver money alongside gold. … [O]ne of the main constituencies f…
What does the good witch of the North represent?
From "Debt, The First 5000 years": L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which appeared in 1900, is widely recognized to be a parable for the Populist campaign of William Jennings Bryan, who twice ran for president on the Free Silver platform – vowing to replace the gold standard with a bimetallic system that would allow the free creation of silver money alongside gold. … [O]ne of the main constituencies f…
What does the good witch of the North represent?
The Lion gets his courage from a bottle in the original (the joke being a reference to a common joke at the time that some people get their courage from a bottle of liquor) But 1939 was so close to the prohibition fiasco, it seems the producers did not like this joke.
Likewise, the scene in the field of (presumably opium) poppies that put everyone to sleep was only added in 1939. It's hard to imagine that joke being added in, say, the time of height of the war on drugs: could Bart Simpson play with opium poppies and pass out to audience laughter 1980's?
I’ve always meant to go through and read the entire Oz series by Baum. I’ve heard that it’s surprisingly enjoyable from start to finish, given the number of books.
How does all of this connect with The Dark Side Of The Moon?
Watch Wizard of Oz with the sound off. Just as the MGM lion finishes roaring, drop the needle[1] onto the Dark Side of the Moon LP, and watch as the songs sync up to the imagery. -- [1] Or un-pause the CD/MP3 etc.
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If anyone hasn't read the book... It seriously is one of the best kids books ever written. It's short. You can read it in like 2 hours or less. It will take you right back to childhood. 100% worth it. Cannot recommend it enough.
I have to second this. While overshadowed by the first, all of the Oz books by L. Frank Baum are excellent reads full of imagination and compelling characters.
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That just sounds like a (very) elaborate troll. Write a three part book stuffed full of symbolism and then write an essay complaining how people read into the symbolism. And surely what the reader sees in a work is at least as valid as what the author intended. If I see Mordor as Stalinist Russia, isnt that my prerogative? Its selling the art form short if the only possible interpretation is the authors own. /rant (a…
>And surely what the reader sees in a work is at least as valid as what the author intended. I'm going to have to agree to disagree with you on that one.
Lets take the example of Farenheit 451, wikipedia [1] suggests an evolution (at least) in Bradbury's own interpretation of his own book:
"In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury said that he wrote Fahrenheit 451 because of his concerns at the time (during the McCarthy era) about the threat of book burning in the United States. In later years, he described the book as a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature."
So which is right? And neither of those seem to match up with the popular interpretation of it being against state surveillance and censorship. If that's what it says to so many people, if that's why it's so popular it seems strange to discount that interpretation.
Then we look at older works where the cultural nuance passes us by. Should we not be allowed to enjoy Shakespeare on our cultural terms instead of (always) through the prism of Elizabethan culture?
Then you've got things like Anne Franks diary. I suppose half the point is getting inside her head, but on the other hand you're reading it knowing what's going to happen, and interpreting it as the author intended is, impossible?
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>And surely what the reader sees in a work is at least as valid as what the author intended. I'm going to have to agree to disagree with you on that one.
In the entire concept, or just the degree of importance? Lets take the example of Farenheit 451, wikipedia [1] suggests an evolution (at least) in Bradbury's own interpretation of his own book: "In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury said that he wrote Fahrenheit 451 because of his concerns at the time (during the McCarthy era) about the threat of book burning in the United States. In later years, he described the book…
You can definitely make any interpretation you want. They will be valuable as long as you can take something from them, regardless of the author intent. As you have just shown, even authors might change or make additional interpretations as time passes. The world keeps changing, the contexts change, and we make new interpretations. That's pretty cool. But the other thing is whether they are true or not (whether they reflect something that the author really attempted to express). In this case, it's not strange to me that many authors want to explicitly say that they didn't attempt to hide some political meaning or similar behind their works. The problem is not that people reads into what they write, but that they attribute to them things they never meant. And that's an imposition on an author, which is not nice, and that's what a lot of people will discuss with you when you say that any interpretations are "valid".