Baum's original Oz is darker and stranger than Wicked

It has a flawed female character too: Dorothy

Art for The Intrinsic Perspective is by Alexander Naughton

What better way to spend 20 minutes than reading a review of a book published in 1900?

If you should ever spend such time, spend it now, for the land of Oz is having a cultural moment following the success of the new Wicked movie. “Defying Gravity” was #1 on the iTunes chart, and the Wicked subreddit breached 200,000 members (riding the momentum from Glinda memes).

I, so unaware of what’s in, took no heed until I saw the posters and signage in all their pink and green glory. And then I couldn’t help but notice the promotional narrative around Wicked: It’s supposed to be a darker, more adult, more realistic telling of a cheery fable. The Wicked Witch, now a former roommate of Glinda, discovers that the wizard not only has no power, but is planning a—let’s just say it—Hitlerian political move to blame all of Oz's problems on talking animals. So she defects to political resistance.

I sound like I'm making fun of the movie here. To clarify, I’ve read Maguire’s novel that sparked the adaptation, but have I seen the movie myself? Uh, no. When would I have time to see a movie? I have a three-year-old and one-year-old. But I have seen the musical Wicked three times in person, and the movie hews almost identically to it. And I actually liked the musical a lot. (Does it surprise you to know I love musicals? Yes, I do. Let's move on.) The buddy-comedy of Elphaba and Glinda hits the right notes, as it were, thanks mostly to the air-headed charm of Glinda, who does her best Legally Blonde but-in-sorcery-school impression. Certainly, the new stage/screen adaptation is a more adult story than the sunny film adaptation from 1939.

But the original book is a different, darker, matter. I know because I just finished a read-aloud of Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to my son. I’d found a 1903 edition at a used bookstore where each page is riven with images and splashed with colors; its frenetic design began to make sense when I realized The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is all about colors (as every child knows, each color holds a different kind of magic).

And now I think Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz already contains much of the elements the new stage/screen version of Wicked is supposed to add. In fact, I’ve come to conspiratorially believe people have been reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz wrong for, oh, about a century.

So sit, and listen to bloody misfortunes and strange occurrences. Hear of a woodsman who chops off parts of his body until it is entirely replaced with tin, of porcelain figurines cursed to life and consciousness who break into pieces if they should ever fall down, of a giant spider with razor-sharp teeth and a long neck as thin as a wasp’s body, of how the Emerald City isn't really green at all but as dull white as a cataract. Hear of the real Dorothy, she who never needed an anti-hero story, because she was always an anti-hero to begin with.

Dorothy, the assassin and the fool.