"The Wizard of Oz" and its right to endure

Wilson High School, where I teach, is preparing a production of The Wizard of Oz, which is--I think--the greatest live-action children's movie in history.

Every morning my wife and I wake up singing the songs, and every morning we comment on how we are not tired of the songs yet--a sign that the songs are very good.

The play is based on the 1939 MGM film, with some portions of the script that were cut from the film, and some additional post-modern schtick.  (The play version was written in 1987 for the Royal Shakespeare Company, too soon to benefit from the death of post-modernism and the playwright's need to answer all those nagging questions like, "What happened to Miss Gultch?" and "Where did the Winkies come from and why do they sing that song?")  The music utilizes not only the Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg songs from the film, but the thematic elements from Herbert Stothart's masterful score.  (What would Oz be without the witch's theme?  I ask you.)

I have had a couple of opportunities lately to talk to my students about why I think the Oz music is so good, and part of my answer is that it doesn't dumb itself down at all for the sensibilities of little children.  It is adult, sophisticated, and accessible to children all at once.

Think of "Over the Rainbow."  The melody covers an octave and a third; so many of today's melodies are simple diatonic chants--if there are melodies at all in modern popular music.  The harmonies of the A  portion of the chorus change tonic three times, and are full of rich harmonic extensions and dissonant suspensions, finally resolving on a 6th (for the unmusical among you, that's halfway between major and minor; or, in other words, halfway between happy and sad).

The lyrics are brilliant in their combination of childhood simplicity and adult complexity:  "Some day I"ll wish upon a star [an oft-repeated childhood phrase] and wake up where the clouds are far behind me [an ambiguous idea that could be anything from the safety of heaven to death]."  The verse (usually omitted) speaks of "clouds...darken[ing] up the skyway," which is possible in the best of times, but takes on additional significance when one realizes that two Jews wrote it in 1938.  It is practically a national lament, "If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why, oh, why can't I?"

I personally love the playful rhymes of the triptych "If I Only Had a Brain/Heart/Nerve":  "I would not be just a nuffin,/ My head all full of stuffin',"  "When a man's an empty kettle,/ He should be on his mettle" (how often do you get puns like that--the "metal" man should be on his "mettle," or show his worth/courage--in lyrics nowadays?), and "I would show the dinosaurus/ Who's king around the fores'."

"The Jitterbug" was cut from the film to save time and because it was too much of its age for timeless Oz.  Now, 75 years later, it fits perfectly, and that's good.  It is loud, dissonant, big-band jazz at its best.

When children's theater or children's films succeed today, they succeed on the same terms, I think.  First, they are not dumbed down.  Second, they do not stint in quality simply because they are made for a younger audience.  And, third, they are understood on multiple levels that continue to enrich the viewer throughout adulthood.

One Mormon's take on Arizona bill SB 1062 (the "anti-gay bill")

I finally read SB 1062, and I don't see what the fuss is about.

You may have heard of SB 1062.  It's been in the news lately.  It's usually characterized as a terrible piece of legislation that will allow for the reinstatement of "Jim Crow" laws under the guise of religious freedom.  In headline after headline it's described as Arizona's "anti-gay law."

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taken no position on it.  A group of Latter-day Saints who support gay-marriage has publicly opposed it.

It's only about two pages long, and it clarifies the state's take on federal law that protects religious beliefs.  The most far reaching part of it, to me, seems to be the redefining of "person" to include some businesses.  It doesn't codify discrimination against homosexuals (it never mentions them), nor does it give businesses absolute freedom to do whatever they want.  It merely says that the government must have a compelling interest in removing a person's ability to practice his or her religion, and now the "person" may also be a business.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the legislation, saying that it was "too broad."  That may be so.  Legislation that is too broadly written has created problems throughout the world.  Read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago for an example.  It was one Soviet law, written very broadly, that allowed for the arrests that filled the gulags.

I'm not a legal expert, and I don't know the ramifications of the wording of SB 1062. It may actually be so broad that it would invite businesses to open up whites-only lunch-counters because the owner's religious convictions forbade the mingling of whites and non-whites.  I don't think the market would stand for it; and I don't think such a business could withstand the onslaught of public disapproval and stay open.  (This is not 1914, after all.)  Still, if a law allowed such a thing, it would not be a desirable law.


As other states mull the same issue, I wonder if the law might have to be written very specifically.  In certain small businesses, where alternate services are readily available, and where participation in some specific activities would violate the business owner's deeply-held religious convictions, the business owner ought to be exempt from lawsuits or government intervention if he or she chooses to follow his conscience rather than take the cash.  The Arizona law lists such businesses (including, I noted, a theater).  Maybe it included too many businesses.

It seems reasonable to me, for example, that a bakery should be required to serve all people who come into it, but could be allowed to refuse to make a cake that endorses gay marriage, just as it would be reasonable for the business to refuse to make an obscene cake.

It would not be right for that business to refuse all service to some people because they are overtly, covertly, or apparently gay.  It would also not be right for anyone to force the bakery to inscribe messages that the bakery owner considered offensive.

Like Governor Brewer, though, I'm not exactly sure how the line can be drawn legislatively.  A photographer should be given the same exemptions, I think, and so should a church-owned building.  But what about a public theater or an apartment building?  Should only non-believers work as county clerks, or should county clerks be allowed a religious exemption to refuse to perform a wedding?

I don't think the crafters of the Fourteenth Amendment intended all of this.