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There's No Plate Like Tin
Jun. 8th, 2006 07:08 pmI've just finished reading two more apocryphal Oz books: Melody Grandy's Forever in Oz, and Ray Powell's The Raggedys in Oz. So it's time for another one of my frequently written and seldom read Oz book reviews!
( Spoilers for both books below the cut )
I know I'm not alone in wanting unofficial Oz-related stories to be as consistent with each other as possible. There are the Royal Timeline of Oz and the Historically Accurate Chronological Chain, both of which are attempts to list all of the Oz fiction that's at least mostly consistent with (what's usually considered to be) the official series. Striving for consistency is a noble goal, but a lot of these books are very rare, so it might confuse people if a new author were to incorporate ideas from them, especially if they mean significant changes to established characters. ("Wait, when did the Shaggy Man get a sex change and prosthetic wings, and marry the Soldier with Green Whiskers?" "What, haven't you read The Grand Grape-Eating Green Monkey of Oz? The author made a whole twenty photocopies of it!") Some people's answer to this is to propose that new Oz books (at least those by people who want to be Historically Accurate) shouldn't make any major changes at all to the main Oz characters. This would presumably make Forever Historically Inaccurate, since it includes a significant change to the Tin Woodman. Even if Oz fans LIKE the change, if they haven't read Forever, they might be confused by other books referencing it. And there's also the matter of a lot of the newer books still being under copyright, and the authors being difficult to contact. I get the impression that such consistency isn't really a consideration to writers of fan-fiction set in other universes. I guess part of why it's so important to me is that I like seeing Oz as a place with a consistent history.
In other Oz-related news, my first thought on the Wicked soundtrack is that it sounds pretty...Disney-esque. Not what I would have expected based on reading the book, but I'd heard that it was much lighter fare than the written version, so I'm not too surprised. I'd sort of like to see the show sometime, but I'm not really much for live theater. I have heard that they're thinking of making it into a movie, though. There's nothing we need more in this world than a movie based on a play based on a book based on a movie based on a book, is there? :P
On Wednesday night,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bethje and I watched American History X, which was a well-made and disturbing film. At the risk of overgeneralizing, I think it's safe to say that racists are all really stupid, and generally quite scary. There's actually a very tenuous Oz connection here, because Fairuza Balk, who had played Dorothy in Return to Oz, was a white supremacist in this film. Those are probably two of the most different roles possible. I don't think Judy Garland ever played a neo-Nazi, did she?
[1] The Tin Woodman is unnamed in the first Oz book, but he's called "Niccolo Chopper" in the original musical play. In The Marvelous Land of Oz and later books, the character is simply called "Nick Chopper." In her books, Melody gives his full first name as Nicholas, rather than Niccolo.
[2] Spelled "Chopfyte" in Forever, which actually makes more sense than Baum's original spelling, since he's a combination of Nick CHOPPER and Captain FYTER. I've stuck with the original spelling in my review, though.
( Spoilers for both books below the cut )
I know I'm not alone in wanting unofficial Oz-related stories to be as consistent with each other as possible. There are the Royal Timeline of Oz and the Historically Accurate Chronological Chain, both of which are attempts to list all of the Oz fiction that's at least mostly consistent with (what's usually considered to be) the official series. Striving for consistency is a noble goal, but a lot of these books are very rare, so it might confuse people if a new author were to incorporate ideas from them, especially if they mean significant changes to established characters. ("Wait, when did the Shaggy Man get a sex change and prosthetic wings, and marry the Soldier with Green Whiskers?" "What, haven't you read The Grand Grape-Eating Green Monkey of Oz? The author made a whole twenty photocopies of it!") Some people's answer to this is to propose that new Oz books (at least those by people who want to be Historically Accurate) shouldn't make any major changes at all to the main Oz characters. This would presumably make Forever Historically Inaccurate, since it includes a significant change to the Tin Woodman. Even if Oz fans LIKE the change, if they haven't read Forever, they might be confused by other books referencing it. And there's also the matter of a lot of the newer books still being under copyright, and the authors being difficult to contact. I get the impression that such consistency isn't really a consideration to writers of fan-fiction set in other universes. I guess part of why it's so important to me is that I like seeing Oz as a place with a consistent history.
In other Oz-related news, my first thought on the Wicked soundtrack is that it sounds pretty...Disney-esque. Not what I would have expected based on reading the book, but I'd heard that it was much lighter fare than the written version, so I'm not too surprised. I'd sort of like to see the show sometime, but I'm not really much for live theater. I have heard that they're thinking of making it into a movie, though. There's nothing we need more in this world than a movie based on a play based on a book based on a movie based on a book, is there? :P
On Wednesday night,
bethje and I watched American History X, which was a well-made and disturbing film. At the risk of overgeneralizing, I think it's safe to say that racists are all really stupid, and generally quite scary. There's actually a very tenuous Oz connection here, because Fairuza Balk, who had played Dorothy in Return to Oz, was a white supremacist in this film. Those are probably two of the most different roles possible. I don't think Judy Garland ever played a neo-Nazi, did she?[1] The Tin Woodman is unnamed in the first Oz book, but he's called "Niccolo Chopper" in the original musical play. In The Marvelous Land of Oz and later books, the character is simply called "Nick Chopper." In her books, Melody gives his full first name as Nicholas, rather than Niccolo.
[2] Spelled "Chopfyte" in Forever, which actually makes more sense than Baum's original spelling, since he's a combination of Nick CHOPPER and Captain FYTER. I've stuck with the original spelling in my review, though.
