THE FOUR PHILOSOPHICAL TRUTHS OF
THE WIZARD OF OZ
If you wanted to show a person from another country what America is really about, I would suggest that you start with the movie, The Wizard of Oz. As a philosophy instructor, I try to show my students how basic philosophical assumptions frame the way we understand the world. This movie makes for a wonderful example because the philosophical views it expresses are more accepted today in America than they were in 1939 when the movie was made. It's also a great example because it's hard to find a college student who hasn't seen the movie more than once. Consider the following questions and ask yourself if Dorothy isn't the personification of the American mind.
First Question: Why did Dorothy want to leave Oz?
If you travel to Paris, arguably the home of the world's finest cuisine, you will find American tourists lined up on the Champs Elysees to partake of...a Big Mac. There's a McDonald's in the heart of Paris, you know. It's hard to imagine why a person would leave hearth and home for the wonders of another country and then spend every moment trying to find a poor reproduction of their homeland. Every nationality has its own nation spirit and pride, but Americans have a long-standing tradition of ignoring foreign languages, downplaying world history, and misunderstanding foreign cultures.
Dorothy's behavior at the end of the movie is perfectly American. She abandons friends who have risked their lives for her. She rejects a glorious Technicolor world where she is a national heroine. She gives everything up in order to return to a dusty gray farm in Kansas.
Truth Number One: "There's no place like home."
Second Question: How did Dorothy defeat the Wicked Witch of the West?
Consider the match-up: a powerful sorceress devoid of scruples against a mere farmgirl from Kansas. Forget Glinda; she's no help. You'd have to be crazy to bet on the farmgirl. Now recall the ending of the movie and Dorothy's victory over the Wicked Witch. Does Dorothy outsmart the witch? No. Does she study hard to determine the best way to slay a witch? It never occurs to her. Does she overpower her? Not at all. She achieves victory through pure dumb luck.
This is a typically American approach to warfare. Between wars, America has a persistent history of disarming itself into military helplessness. A few years after the Wizard of Oz was made, we stumbled our way into the most important war in our country's history. We were so poorly prepared for the Second World War that we sent armor units into north Africa armed with training munitions. After that victory, we proved that we had learned nothing. In the Korean conflict, our first battles were total losses. Task Force Smith was underprepared, undermanned, and criminally underequipped. Of course, we eventually won both of those wars "because we're Americans." Over and over again, we have trusted on our moral superiority over other nations as a military strategy...at the cost of the lives of our young men and women.
Truth Number Two: "Goodness must prevail."
Third Question: Who was the Wizard?
Everyone who saw the Wizard of Oz as child couldn't help but be frightened by the Wizard's first appearance. The ghastly, disembodied head and the gusts of fire, combined with a booming voice, was as frightening an authority figure as one could ever imagine. But as Toto teaches us, if you pull back the curtain, you'll find that there's just some charlatan behind the curtain pulling levers and speaking into a microphone. Authority, the movie tells us, is a sham.
Five decades ago, there was still a basic respect for people in positions of authority. We all know by now that Franklin D. Roosevelt couldn't walk because of polio, and that John F. Kennedy had girlfriends over in the White House. The press corps knew about these and many other scandals at the time, but they wouldn't report them out of respect for the office of the president. President Clinton can't expect that sort of protection. Quite to the contrary, the public now wants to know about every whispered rumor and potentially damaging half-truth about our leaders (and sports heroes, and movie stars) , and the press obliges us in our craving to watch the mighty fall.
Truth Number Three: "You can't trust authority."
Fourth Question: What were the lion, the tinman, and the scarecrow looking for?
Everyone can answer this one. The lion wanted courage, the tinman needed a heart, and the scarecrow was looking for a brain. Now ask yourself if they got what they were looking for. If you think back to the end of the movie, you will recall Dorothy's companions being told that they already had what they were looking for. They simply had to look deep inside themselves and they would find that they already needed. They didn't have to work for the qualities they wanted, or study for them or acquire them from someone else.
This simple message has been repackaged over and over again in America. Motivational seminars teach it, it can be found in popular psychology books, the New Age movement embraces it, and I've even heard it preached from the pulpit. Americans have come to accept a leveling democratization that tells us that we're not just morally equal, but that we are also all basically the same.
Truth Number Four: "The truth lies within."
America has changed enormously since 1939, but The Wizard of Oz seems to have grasped the essence of our national character.
© Michael J. Booker, 1997.
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