Uncle Fun and Sparky Land

     (It has become increasingly apparent to me that our good friend Mr. Cousins is in dire need of a drastic head-shrinking. I offer these recent scribblings of his as evidence: I found them in close enough proximity to the shelf where he keeps his billfold and loose change jar to qualify as being in plain view, and therefore public domain. –Uncle Fun.)

Things That Occur to You Before That Second Cup of Coffee Kicks In Department:

     Although it’s earned the label of “classic”, the 1939 movie version of The Wizard of Oz is strange and puzzling in ways that sometimes defy description. Take these lines from the song “We’re off to See The Wizard”:

 

If ever, oh ever, a whiz there was,

The Wizard of Oz is one because,

Because, because, because, because, because—

Because of the wonderful things he does.

 

     What’s weird about this is NOT the fact that the word “because” is repeated six times. (I said it nine times in a row when answering a question during my thesis defense, and still got an M.A. for my trouble.) The mind-blower about this lyric is that, as memory serves, it comes on the heels of precisely ZERO description of the Wizard’s specific powers, or any particular instances in which he put them to use—never mind whether the results were wonderful or not.

     This goes beyond mere jumping to conclusions: Dorothy is extrapolating the idea that some unnamed individual at the far end of a boulevard paved with coloured bricks has a proven track record of marvellous deeds on the strength of his job title alone.  If she’d been going to see, for example, the Chiropractor of Oz, she wouldn’t bother checking up on his credentials, or ask for a referral from either her G.P. or a close personal friend. She’d just blithely skip along with Toto, singing something along the lines of:

 

If ever your back becomes misaligned,

The Chiropractor of Oz will fix your spine,

Your spine, your spine, your spine, your spine, your spine—

Manipulating it until you feel fine.

 

     (This is why there haven’t been any musicals about chiropractors…never mind the challenges for lyricists presented by terms like “chronic femoral dysplasia” and “lumbago”.)

     Just to make it crystal clear what the real problem here is, Dorothy’s got no reliable proof to back her assertions up. She doesn’t even have uncorroborated anecdotal evidence at this point. Usually musicals are sensible enough to have someone step forward and throw in a line of dialogue citing a verifiable concrete manifestation of someone’s abstract virtues, if said virtues are about to be extolled in song. Not so in the Land of Oz. Does a Munchkin take Dorothy aside and tell her that the Wizard cured him of cancer, or reassessed the equity on his house so that he could get a second mortgage at a more competitive rate? NO. Those sawed-off little solipsists are too damn busy jockeying for position to see which of the Lullaby League or the Lollipop Guild can give Dorothy (who’s about to leave anyway) the best welcome to Munchkinland. The only person who even alludes to anything the Wizard might have done is Glinda the Good Witch of the North, and all she does is make vague references to his abilities, which she’s obviously never seen in action. Besides, she’s kind of an unreliable source of information, since her judgement is pretty seriously flawed. After all, she’s just given Dorothy a virtual death sentence by fusing a pair of ruby slippers onto her feet so that the Wicked Witch of the West can’t get her bony green hands on them by any means short of homicide.

     To recap: at the time she starts singing about it, Dorothy has no reason for believing that the Wizard of Oz does ANYTHING at all, much less anything wonderful. She’s going on blind faith, with only the encouragement of an interested party who has the not-very-well-hidden agenda of passing the buck to anyone who can correct a miscalculation that has made Dorothy’s untimely demise both imminent and highly probable. What she should be singing is:

 

That stupid bitch Glinda dropped the ball,

So now I’m forced to pay a call—

A call, a call, a call, a call, a call—

On someone I don’t know from nothin’ at all.

 

     There’s fifteen pages more of this, most of it on the subject of how not casting W.C. Fields as the Wizard was the single greatest injustice of the Twentieth Century, with a two-page digression on how Ned Sparks would have been a better Tin Man than Jack Haley, Sr. If the faintest shred of doubt remained in my mind concerning whether Ye Olde Cousins had gone well and truly off the deep end, it’s somewhere over the rainbow by now. I, for one, would be forever in the debt of anyone out there who can tell me where to obtain a serviceable cut-rate straightjacket.

Uncle Fun